


The Meeting In Bel Air - Part II/II

by Persephone



Series: Willing to Take the Risk [17]
Category: Valentine's Day (2010)
Genre: Canon Gay Character, Canon Gay Relationship, Dysfunctional Family, Family Drama, Father-Son Relationship, L.A. Life, Los Angeles, M/M, Mother-Son Relationship, Original Character(s), Romance, Romantic Comedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-26
Updated: 2015-02-26
Packaged: 2018-03-15 09:33:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 22,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3442169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Persephone/pseuds/Persephone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The meeting takes place.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_Being deeply loved gives you the strength, while loving someone deeply gives you the courage.”  
\- Lao Tzu_

 

He offered to drive them into Bel Air. Holden didn’t argue.

Holden was futzing with an iPhone and not paying much attention to him. Seeing as Holden’s phone was a Blackberry, the iPhone was a new development. He might have presumed it was for work but Holden was handling it in the way he sometimes had when he harbored negative feelings towards something and didn’t want to show it. No matter that the object in this case wasn’t even alive. 

The evening drive from Malibu to Bel Air was a delight. The water was sparkling, swimmers and surfers playing out there, and an evening breeze ruffling their hair through the lowered windows of Holden’s Lexus. Considering that nothing really that great ever seemed to come out of their forays into Bel Air, the drives to and from were always a thing of ironic beauty.

In spite of the semi-permanent look of concentration that had taken over Holden’s face of late, Holden looked like something he could eat in a casual navy shirt and a pair of a sort of dark mustard colored pants that were threatening to take over his evening. And were bringing back memories of another pair of pants he really couldn’t be thinking about right now. 

Holden had returned to his house early and had showered and changed in near total wordlessness, his midnight wanderings of the previous night unmentioned.

The day had been a quiet one for him as well, even though there had been a couple of typical offseason occurrences with players across the league. But this summer especially, with him not being the main topic of discussion scathing or otherwise, he wasn’t about to do more than read the head-shaking headlines and move on. League related things he had to worry about were whether they were keeping their defensive coach and which new draftees were going to need the most breaking in come August.

He had also woken that morning with a kind of diffused tension, and he was using diffused as a kind of conscious check on his emotions, that time was unspooling whether he liked it or not. Players getting into trouble always heralded the offseason proper, quite aside from his schedule with his reps. 

Fact was, he had about three and a half months to resolve all of this. Three and a half time-crunched months before he had to get back to San Diego and before Paula imposed her football season separation on him and Holden. And then all they could hope was to plan on seeing each other in pictures on the internet or if Holden took pity on him and showed up at the back bleachers of a fucking game and gave him a little sugar.

The wedding was a guarantee, great. But he’d be damned if all he ended up getting were two measly weeks of a honeymoon to spend as quality time with the actual honey.

If the summer deprived him of what he knew both he and Holden wanted, he’d be seeing Holden every week in the season and fuck what Paula said. He’d fire her if she tried to tell him otherwise.

Glancing out the driver side window, he snorted to himself. It was hilarious, imagining him trying to fire Paula.

At last they rolled up to the wide wrought iron gates on Nimes Road.

During the time it took for the gates to roll back, it occurred to him that he hadn’t been in front of them since last July, and couldn’t help but feel a slight flutter in his chest. He glanced at Holden, but let the feeling pass without comment. The one thing he was certain of was that they weren’t the same two people from that time.

He had driven the one hundred-fifty yard driveway, slowly rounded the fountain and parked, and Holden still hadn’t realized they had arrived.

He waited, his arm on the door’s armrest and his right hand on his thigh, watching Holden. 

Holden looked up, stared at the house for a moment, then simply slipped the new phone into his shirt’s front pocket. Holden then turned to him.

“Ready?” Holden asked, as if he were the one needing the question.

“Definitely.”

Holden reached for the door handle.

“Hey,” he called. Holden stopped and turned back to him. “Gimme a kiss.”

Holden swept a look over him. “Why?”

“You’re asking me why?”

“Yeah.”

“I didn’t think I needed to have a reason.”

“Are you trying to psych me?”

“Maybe. Maybe I’m just trying to get one in before your dad steals all of them.”

Holden looked speechless for a second, then sat back, staring a little frustratedly at him. “Are you gonna be like this all weekend?”

Already shifting, he had put himself halfway to him before Holden finished talking. Now he brought himself as close to him as he could and still give him space to give him a patient look, and put his arm on the armrest between them. “Listen,” he said softly. “We’ve spent almost half a year letting situations lead us along. First Paula, then me, now your parents.” He kept his eyes on him, while Holden’s had narrowed but had fastened on his mouth. He was listening. So he said, “I’ve got about four months before I have to leave and be on the road again. And in that time I gotta marry you, take you somewhere far, and have a really good time with you.”

He stopped talking and moved his eyes to the mansion in the background, now painted with yellow evening sunlight. No one had come out of the house yet, which probably meant Alastair himself was standing in the foyer, willing his son to get out of the car. 

He brought his gaze back to Holden, whose eyes were on his own hands, his fragrance filling his mind, and with a look on his face of having decided to let him finish.

“So my advice would be to let your dad give you a hug and tell you how nice it is you being here, let him get his thrills about the whole thing, and let us get this package over to your mom in the morning. And then we’re home free.”

Holden turned to him, his face very close, his blue eyes a room of false calm. 

“How is that different from what I want?” Holden asked in a whisper.

“It’s not,” he whispered back. “It’s just a different play. Now gimme a kiss and prepare yourself to get a hug and a kiss from your dad.”

Holden took a sudden, deep breath, and slowly shook his head. It was as though the realization of what they were about to do just hit him. He suddenly turned and looked toward the back seat. “Where’s the—”

“In my bag. Don’t leave me hangin’.”

Holden settled back into the seat, raised his eyes to meet his. “Sean, I have so much I wish I could tell you. But I wouldn’t even know where to start.” Holden swallowed, then lowered his eyes. And the next thing he knew, Holden was touching his arm, moving his fingers inside the folded cuff of his sleeve in a way and with a controlled heat he wasn’t prepared for. It was only his attention focused since on the crotch of his mustard pants that kept him paralyzed enough not to to see it as an invitation. Because it wasn’t. Holden was just… thinking. 

“I appreciate everything you’ve done,” Holden said. “And I’m gonna do whatever I can to make sure our time here isn’t wasted.”

He nodded, kind of having forgotten what they were talking about, put his arms around him as Holden sat forward and hugged him, his arms locked around his torso and his face against his neck. Holden turned there and kissed his skin, and then he sat still while Holden completed the task he had assigned him, kissing him in his incongruently masterful way that always left him trembling like a virgin. And more so now when he knew what could come after.

Holden sat back, pressed his lips together and gave him a thoroughly clueless encouraging upturn of them, and asked him if he was ready.

He replied in the affirmative, getting out of the car after him and feeling slightly chastened. Holden seemed fully aware of what was lingering unspoken between them and seemed conscious that it was approached deliberately. Whereas he would give anything to just plunge right back in and in the midst of their lives right now that attitude kept smacking him upside he head.

And it was about to again if he was going to spend the weekend with Alastair thinking about mustard on cock of all things.

At the trunk of the car, he grabbed his weekend bag, shut it and took Holden’s from his already strap-tangled hand. Distraction plus his baby, not a good thing. He followed him towards the stone stairs. 

And as they reached it, as she always did, Beau, Alastair’s rather taciturn girlfriend, came lightly traipsing out of the house. Her dyed blonde hair flowing behind her like in a hair shampoo commercial, her heels glittering in the evening sun.

And as always, she waved a “Hi, Holden,” as she passed, and had no words whatsoever for him. They’d met several times over the summer, or at least he’d repeatedly introduced himself to her, to no actual avail. And he had to wonder whether always carrying Holden’s bags as he was half the time she saw them, she assumed him to be the help.

While Holden continued his usual complete lack of acknowledgment of her, he himself couldn’t help but stare after her. He didn’t understand Alastair’s relationship with her. What his needs were with her. Beyond the obvious.

But they had reached the front doors which hadn’t closed after Beau, and Alastair was standing there ushering them in.

House staff were standing right behind Alastair, and the second he crossed the threshold they stepped forward and took their bags from him. He let them have them, slipping his strap from around his neck. Then the two young men immediately retreated, out of reach, and he could have laughed. It couldn’t be more obvious that Alastair had instructed them to do so. Immediately take the bags and leave no room for the changing of minds.

Holden stepped aside to let it all happen, and then attempted to greet the young men in Spanish. But Alastair simply grabbed him and wrapped him in a hug.

He stifled any expression whatsoever from his face, not wishing to get caught looking like he’d set him up. Which he hadn’t.

Holden had gone as still as a cardboard cutout, barely allowing their bodies to touch. Alastair rubbed his back and kissed his temple. 

Then, once his father’s hold slackened, Holden pulled back as if drawn back by a rope around his chest.

Alastair stepped back, pretending not to see the annoyed and unimpressed look Holden didn’t bother to hide. Alastair came a few feet and gave him the slighter version of the embrace.

“Welcome, both of you,” Alastair said, rubbing his hands and giving them a tight-lipped smile.

But it was an effort which strained his already wan look, an appearance that hadn’t improved from their evening before. He had never seen Alastair so devoid of life. Alastair couldn’t even seem to look at Holden, despite the hug, as if afraid he had somehow broken something that had been working well enough.

The atmosphere itself in the house, when he gave the foyer a cursory glance, though suffused with a welcome sunset glow, carried a stillness about it like its owner. As if every flower arrangement, armchair and sofa, even the expansive marble floor itself, was aware of the tension inherent in their presence there.

“Cecelia’s not joining us until the morning,” Alastair said, saying what they already knew but wanting to infuse buoyancy in their evening. “So perfect for us boys to spend some time together, play catch up.”

Since being hugged, Holden had come and was now standing between him and Alastair like he we bodily protecting him. The back of his head more or less in his light of sight as he spoke.

“Sean and I have some things to go over before tomorrow.”

Alastair looked past Holden at him. He did his best not to reflect the pained look in Alastair’s eyes. They did have one or two things they could look over. But it wouldn’t take all evening. Not even half an hour.

But he could see Holden’s neck darkening with color, so he caught Alastair’s eye and just shook his head.

Alastair looked quite hurt. But he raised both hands and nodded in understanding.

He slowly came around Holden and gestured to the staff, silently waiting farther along the foyer with their bags. “I’ll follow them upstairs,” he said, looking for a way to leave them alone. “I’ll go check out—”

“I’ll come with you.”

Before he could reply, Holden had left them and was headed for the staircase.

He looked at Alastair.

“It’ll be good,” he told him in a low voice. “We’re here now, right?”

Alastair glanced after Holden, and hesitantly nodded. It was strange to see him so subdued.

“We’ll see you dinner,” he told him.

“See you two then.”

Taking the stairs slowly up after Holden, he slowed halfway up and peeked down the spiral staircase, trying to see around it down to the foyer.

Alastair was still stand there, his arm folded across his chest and his head down, deep in thought. 

He reached the upper floor and lost sight of them. And following a distance behind Holden, he let him go with the staff and took his time, as he could never resist doing, looking at the old photographs of the family business on the walls.

He had always liked looking at the ones of Holden as a young entrepreneur out of business school, posed with the firm’s other executives. 

But now, after being back home, after gaining clarity on his own injured feelings over the years, he was able to see the photographs in a different light. 

All last summer he had looked at these images, and stewing in his own emotional cauldron, had been blind to the deep struggles Holden himself had been going through. Now as he looked down the line of proud family history, he saw not just photographs of a mogul’s son, but the picture of a young man who from childhood had accepted things as presented to him. Even if not the warmest of families, there had been a sense of loyalty and understanding about them.

But Holden had always somehow been aware that something was off about their lives. That there might be others things out there to experience. And now that undefined awareness, free of Holden’s confusion about himself from last summer, had concretized into a roadblock. One none of the Wilsons knew how to get around.

Reaching the guest suite door Holden and the two house staff had entered, he followed them in and stood by the door, waiting as the first one, a kid, really, held on to his weekend bag and stood there grinning at Holden. The second one started with Holden’s bag toward the bedroom.

“No, it’s fine, just leave it here. I’ll unpack it,” Holden told him. The young man nodded, brought the bag and set it on the floor beside the couch, then nodded and left.

The first one still stood there. He didn’t recognize the kid from seeing him at the house before, yet there was something familiar about him.

“How’s your grandmother?” Holden asked him.

“She’s doing great,” the kid said instantly, still grinning. “She’s got homemade ice cream ready for you.”

Holden nodded distractedly, before waving him over to bring the bag, while smoothly slipping the iPhone from his front pocket. Holden set it on a far side table. The kid brought his bag and set it next to Holden’s.

“Tell her I’ll try to be there this weekend,” Holden told him.

“Yes, sir.”

The kid grinned even more, no apparent intention of leaving, and Holden glanced at him. Then he stopped and gaped at the kid.

“You’ve _met_ him.”

The kid did a small bounce to his other foot. “Not really, sir,” he said, clasping his hands behind his back. “I had to get out that afternoon to go to class.”

Holden shook his head. “Sean, this is Mikey. His family’s been helping out my family since before he was a pain. Mikey, this is Sean. Don’t you dare not wash your hands for a week after you shake his hand.”

“Haha,” the kid said, bouncing over with his arm extended. “No, sir. I’m not crazy.”

He shifted from the door and shook the kid’s hand, or more accurately, got his arm pumped.

“Mikey Alvarez, the third,” the kid said enthusiastically. “Huge fan, Sean. Huge, _huge._ ”

“Well, I think likewise, if you’re taking care of him now,” he told him.

Mikey grinned, kept his arm stuck out in a way that probably meant Holden’s concerns were going to be realized, at least for the next hour or so, then nodded excitedly and left.

The door clicked closed beside him, and he resumed leaning against the jamb. He’d enjoyed himself the last time they’d visited the old woman he presumed Holden and Mikey had been talking about, Holden’s old nanny, who Holden still called Nana, and hoped they’d get to see her and her team roster of an extended family again.

Holden had picked up, placed on an ottoman and was unzipping _his_ bag.

Probably at his silence, Holden glanced at him. 

“I’m not hearing anything about you staying in a different room, Sean.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

That argument he’d already had with himself and come to the necessary conclusions. Still unmarried as they were, he wasn’t crazy about the idea of shacking up with Holden under his father’s roof. But he had anticipated the look Holden would have given him after what they’d gotten up to at his mom and dad’s—which were different circumstances but would Holden listen—and he’d decided it was a small fight he could lose in a grander one.

But with Holden still feeling this way, what he was wondering how dinner was going to go. He brought it up and Holden merely shrugged.

“Believe me, I’ve had more awkward dinners with them. It’ll be fine.”

—

And strangely, it was.

Initially, both Holden and Alastair sat tensely, both with jaws clenched as though against the urge to blurt their thoughts.

He’d been sure Alastair in his dauntless way would capitalize on having waylaid Holden to manage an upbeat time. But Alastair seemed more like how he had seen him at the bottom of the stairs, in a struggle against a sense of hopelessness.

And contrary to what Holden would obviously prefer, Holden himself did seem affected. He kept asking him to pass stuff that was reachable on the table as if wanting to rub it in with his dad that as he could observe for himself, he was here but not talking to him.

Holden had made sure to wear his engagement ring—he doubted Holden would be removing it all weekend—and it was catching and refracting light from everywhere possible.

A couple of times early on, he caught Alastair’s eyes and gave him an encouraging smile. But he stopped it when he saw Holden giving him a wounded look.

He could have made it easier for both of them, acted as a focus on which they could direct their words and attention. But beyond complying with passing sauces and side plates, he refused to do it.

Aside from the meeting on the boat, the three of them hadn’t gotten together since January, after his return from the season. At that their disastrous dinner at the Hotel Bel-Air. It was really where they had left things, metaphorically speaking, in this particular dynamic. Not even so much on the boat, which had been purely about Holden and Alastair. Well, in this beautiful garden, under twinkling stars and a beautiful crescent moon, he could think of no more serene a setting for them to officially bury the hatchet on that.

He glanced at Alastair, who was now looking discomposed at Holden’s lack of engagement. Catching his eye, he gave him a quick nod of encouragement. Alastair looked momentarily unsure. But he just gave him a slower, bigger nod.

Alastair finally stepped up. Clearing his throat, he took his time spearing some vegetables before he casually brought up exactly what he had been thinking.

“I gotta say,” he said. “This beats the last time the three of us got together for dinner. Sean, you don’t have that look about you like you’d like to beat me to a pulp.”

Holden froze, his cutlery buried in his food. He seemed to be ascertaining that he had heard right.

He grinned across the table at Alastair. “Yeah, and you don’t have that look of desperation about you. Like you just counted and came up an ace short.”

Alastair broke into soft, rich laughter, the first of its kind he had heard from the man in quite some time. “Is that how I looked?”

“That’s how you looked,” he confirmed, throwing a sideways glance at Holden. “Right, sweetheart?”

Holden at first was silent. “You two don’t need me,” he then said.

Which, thankfully, just made Alastair laugh.

“And listen, I hope the night on Ben’s boat wasn’t too bad. I know Holden has a problem with the water.”

He angled a look at Holden, giving him a chance to answer. Holden was busy sticking his fork in his braised lamb, and apparently sticking with his vocalized conclusion about the two of them and refused the olive branch. 

Though, noticeably, after having broken his silence, his jaw didn’t seem so tightly locked.

“We had a great night afterward,” he answered for Holden. “Even went out on deck to look at the coastline and the stars later.”

“Really? How’d you ever get him to agree to that?” Alastair asked, titling his head at Holden.

“Well, there’s this thing I let him do. And then it calms him down and he… doesn’t give a shit about the water.”

Alastair was laughing heartily, dropping his fork to tap on the table. 

Holden didn’t so much as color even slightly. He would have blushed to hell and back if Holden had said something like that about him in front of Alastair, and getting a rise out of him had been why he had done it.

“Well, Sean,” Alastair said. “You are quite the consort.”

He chuckled. “I do what I can.”

“So tell me what we’re doing differently for the wedding,” Alastair boldly said, the tension all but gone from his bearing. “Let’s get this thing solved so that Holden can be happy.”

When there was again no response from his left, he looked at Holden. Holden was busy with his food. But he gave him a tiny nod of his head.

“Well, the trip to Soirée was fine, but for now we’re holding off on any changes until after this weekend.”

And for now he skirted the bigger issues they were there to resolve, wanting to wait for Cecelia to be present for that.

“Seeing the wedding planner was the major coup,” Alastair said. “Whatever you kids want to do is fine by me.”

His eyebrows went up in surprise, but neither of the Wilson men were looking at him. Holden seemed to not to surprised at all that his father had just relinquished his majority stake in his hold on the wedding, and Alastair didn’t seem to have played it as a winning hand with his son.

So what exactly had they been sniping each other about the wedding for, he wondered. They seemed to understand each other perfectly well on it.

He just shook his head and went back to his meal.

Alastair then began asking him about the offseason and what was coming up next in the NFL’s schedule. He told him about the scouting combine, which was happening that month in Indianapolis, where young prospects for the league were worked over and talent-spotted by the coaches. He noticed Holden’s lashes flutter a little at that, and pretended that he hadn’t. 

“Then there’s the Draft coming up, right?” Alastair asked. “Big party day for you guys.”

“It can be, but I tend to watch it with my agent and just let the noise pass me by.”

Holden had rolled his lips tight and was reaching for his glass of water. 

Coupled with asking him about the birthday party he’d considered attending a few weeks ago, he was getting the distinct impression that Holden might be interested in the NFL. Or at least, their offseason schedule. He honestly couldn’t remember whether Holden had ever said one way or the other.

“So what’s going on with the two players in trouble? One for felony DUI and the other for what was it, trying to check in a gun at the airport?”

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s still early yet. I wouldn’t spend all my concern on just these two yet.”

Alastair shook his head. “I hear you.”

Holden finished his meal while he and Alastair talked, setting down his cutlery and drinking from his water glass in silence. Showing a ton of restraint. He then uncovered a platter of warm bread pudding and focused on looking for the heated caramel sauce that was somewhere on the table.

But as they talked on, his and Alastair’s conversation flowing easily, Holden, slowly eating his desert with a very focused air, moved his hand to his knee. A little surprised, he must have skipped a couple words in his sentence. But Holden just left it there. Soon he was absently brushing his fingers over his knee, as though lulled by their conversation. And, just as likely, the amazing bread pudding.

But he didn’t interfere with whatever was going on in Holden’s mind, only glancing occasionally at him and passing whatever he asked for.

Until, casually, he simply said, “Sweetheart, if the deal you’re closing is in Copenhagen, why’d you have to go to London?”

“It was an emergency face to face, and London was in the middle.”

And Alastair, business mogul that he was, smoothly took it from there. Holden answered all of his father’s not necessary questions easily, simply falling into a groove of their relationship that nothing seemed to impair.

And he noticed that Alastair seemed almost pitifully happy with this neutral state of things.

And he didn’t miss when Holden, at a point in their two-person conversation, glanced at Alastair in responding and had nothing but an open-minded look on his face.

—

“Oh my God, I thought he’d never leave.”

He laughed under his breath, bringing a finger to his lips.

“He’s gone,” Holden said, looking over his shoulder toward the long French windows. “You’re gonna have to take him with you when you go on the road, Sean. I hate to break it to you.”

“And I hate to break it to you, but you’re kidding if you think he’s taking your place in the fall. I’m putting you on Chargers’ payroll come August.”

While Holden laughed, he grabbed the arm of Holden’s chair, wanting to get closer to the mustard pants, but the chairs were of wrought iron and with Holden in it, wouldn’t inch. He sat up and moved his closer so that when he sat down Holden had to move his arm out of the way to make room for him. Better. In his own seat, he sat lower and settled against him and wrapped his arm around Holden’s thigh.

“As what?” Holden asked him, looking down at him. He leaned over and whispered what his dream job for him was on the team. The smell of him was making him thankful he was sitting down. Holden, breathless with laughter, managed to say, “Paula would _love_ that.” And he could feel Holden's torso, warm and taut against his back. Brushing him when he moved. And if he moved his elbow in a certain way, he was sure Holden would lose his control a little. Rub something else against him. Give him one of his nice moans. 

Then Holden brought his lips to his temple, whispered, “You know what _I_ would love?”

 _Yes,_ he couldn’t stop himself from thinking. _But you’re not letting yourself go there._

“What I would love,” Holden said quietly. “Is for you to do me the favor… of coming upstairs with me.”

He contemplated the situation. It was barely nine p.m. Alastair would expect to have them join hims inside for whatever else he had in mind for togetherness. But being so early still, they could have an interval and still not appear rude. If by rude he didn’t mean having sex with his son while the man waited downstairs.

He wasn’t done thinking it when the lights around the garden patio, already pretty for their evening meal, switched off and on at points around the space, and suddenly they were in a more romantic version of their locale.

Holden looked toward the house. “Somebody knows what I’m talking about.”

He ignored the effect and cleared his throat, his hand around Holden’s thigh contracting without his permission.

“Is that a yes?” Holden asked. And when he only sighed, Holden dropped his head against his temple, the arm around his chest tightening. “You’re killing me, Sean. So what’s gonna happen later tonight?”

“Well, maybe when he’s asleep.”

Holden was completely silent. Then he said with a sigh, “All right, fine. Go be with him.” Holden sat back, releasing him.

He turned his head up at him. “It doesn’t mean we can’t—”

“You’re not about to use me like that,” Holden said with finality. “Off the bench, Jackson. Go do your thing.”

He sat forward slowly, turning to give him a put upon look. Holden rolled his eyes and waved a hand. Then, standing up, Holden slowly straddled around his legs, got out from behind the table and stood for a moment staring at it. He reached down and picked up a cut pear.

He watched him go.

He sat there for a while, running his fingers back and forth across his beard. Would he even be able to _do_ it, with Alastair so prominent on his mind?

Okay, now he was just kidding himself. He got up, picked up an apple from the table, and went in Holden’s direction.

Upstairs, the door to their suite was closed. He lowered his head and knocked on it.

“Who is it?”

He stared at the wide, cream door. 

“It’s me,” he said.

Holden took his time coming to the door. When it opened, Holden stood there holding it not too wide, his body filling up the space and his eyes somehow looking genuinely curious.

“Are you here for cookies?”

“Lemme in.”

“You want I should have ESPN Radio going?” Holden asked, moving aside. “So he doesn’t suspect what we’re doing up here? What do we say if he comes knocking wanting to know what the groaning’s all about?”

“Rag all you want, Wilson,” he said, entering slowly. “We gotta keep it down.”

—

Holden didn’t keep it down. Neither did he want him to. And he wished to almighty God that he had brought his training kit.

He had the pants down around Holden’s thighs and his fist between them, pulling him hard and steady into his mouth, so hard he was trailing all over himself. 

“I love these,” he had whispered when he had first gotten on his knees, wrapping his arm around one leg of the heavy mustard pants.

“They love you back.”

And so he had unbuttoned and unzipped them with care and attention, leaving his teeth marks on them where he could.

Now Holden was moaning in a long steady sound, interspersing his name when he ran out of air, his hands on his shoulders, sometimes rubbing the back of his head, but mostly just holding on to him, staring down at him.

On his haunches, his pants also around his thighs, he hadn’t once let his eyes close, couldn’t take them off Holden’s cock. Loving the color of the pants too much. Then he was pulling back and kneeling there just staring at everything before him, liking the way doing nothing was making Holden say encouraging things to him, sucking on his shaft when Holden convinced him enough. 

When he used his teeth and Holden cried out his name once more, begging for him to let him fuck his mouth, he swallowed his cock, pulled him in hard and steady, and that was when he began trailing all over himself. He blew the lights out of Holden. But he was saving himself for later.

And then it was Holden’s turn and his knees were weak long before Holden raised his hot blue eyes up at him. Holden didn’t have anything to say, just wanted to see him looking corrected. He knew it because he had seen that look in Holden’s eyes before. So much so that he reached down, slipping his hand into his hair, gripped him and said through his teeth, “Don’t fucking back away from this.”

Holden merely touched his thigh, skimming his fingers to the sensitive inner skin, making his cock jump. But he didn’t take him in his mouth. Instead he knelt there kissing and touching his body, sending little licks around to the back of his thighs and the curve of his ass, doing the same thing he had done to him but far, far hotter. 

Then Holden turned him around. Leaving teeth marks where he could. And when his hand came on his cock, between his legs, he knew he’d have to wait for that deep throating he was dreaming of until later tonight. 

—

After they came back downstairs, pear and apple hungrily consumed, Holden told him he was going to walk the grounds, go say hi to the household staff.

He said this while standing at the bottom of a back stairs, which led to a more, to him at least, livable area of the house. Very cosy spaces and not too far from a smaller kitchen. There was also a cavernous hallway at which end he knew was a family den. Leading out the other way, the space simply led out to a section of the back gardens. Somewhere between here and there, he understood, were the private quarters for the household staff.

Holden leaned down and kissed his mouth, then pulled back slightly and looked into his eyes. Pleasure still swam in the depths of Holden’s, and his were stuck on him. He felt very good that he could send him off like this, that he had put that look there.

“See you later, QB,” he said softly.

He nodded and stepped back so he could let him pass, his arms folded across his chest so he wouldn’t hold him back, and watched him wander off.

Slowly but surely, that thing was coming back out.

“Where’s Holden?”

He looked over his shoulder to see Alastair coming down the hallway from the den section. 

He felt nothing even close to embarrassment. 

_Huh,_ he thought to himself. He told him where Holden was headed.

“Oh, should we join him?”

He turned and slowly began walking toward him. “Let’s give him some space,” he said. “He’s thinking through a lot of things at the moment.”

Alastair very quickly nodded. “Sounds good,” he said. Then he waved at him. “C’mere, Sean, I want to show you something. Take a look at this.”

They entered a large, comfortably decorated room—less white French period and more brown leathers—that was part full sized bar and part media room. So he supposed, an entertainment room.

Alastair was walking toward a large center table, a really spectacular wood carved one on an already impressive room.

It occurred to him that the old Alastair might have had a crass remark to make about their hour plus disappearance. And maybe that was what he had been fearing. This new Alastair didn’t seem to have any such inclination.

They sat on a long sofa, Alastair on one end with a stack of gilded photo albums in front of him. He took up the other end, assuming the albums were to be opened and passed down to him.

One album was already opened and Alastair was pointing to it. He moved closer and and peered at it. On the page was a good sized graduation photo of him with his arm around Holden’s shoulder, a seriously proud look on his face, and a more tolerant though clearly happy one on Holden’s face. On the opposite page was an identical one with Cecelia and Holden, the identical look on Holden’s face.

“USC, with top honors,” Alastair said, with so much pride he broke his gaze from the photo and turned and smiled at him. “And an award for most conscientious senior. We knew we had done something right.”

He began wishing that Holden could be present to hear his father. But something told him it was exactly why Holden wasn’t there.

“Okay,” Alastair said, closing the album and moving it aside. “Let’s start from the beginning.”

Alastair showed him Holden’s childhood albums. The baby and toddler pictures were just about as precious as he would have imagined. And he was staring at them trying not to look like an anvil had been dropped on his head, understanding his own deep desire to have kids. Kids that would probably look a lot like the brown haired, blued eyed baby angel that was staring, typically frankly, out of the old Polariods.

“You want kids, Sean?” Alastair suddenly asked.

He kept a mild expression and nodded.

“That’s good. Very good.”

But the pictures were… not really much like his family’s own, or the ones he had grown up seeing in other homes. It was mostly just the three of them, mother, father and son, and some only two of either. Some with Alastair and Cecelia’s friends. Birthday parties that didn’t look all that fun. Very orchestrated. Holden was smiling in all the pictures. 

But it was the ones with him and his son that Alastair wanted him to see. And it was a small revelation. Here was the missing link among the photos lining the walls. The ones that explained the sorrow both father and son were currently feeling. They’d had a loving relationship, at least when Holden had been a little boy.

There was Alastair with his little son on his shoulders, both laughing at the camera. And reading to him from a book, carrying him on his hip for land inspections, helping him build Lego structures. He snorted to himself at that last one. Holden had memories from somewhere, no doubt about that.

“Isn’t that something?” Alastair said fondly. “He was my kid. So quiet, so accident prone I actually had my secretary buy knee pads and a riding helmet.” Alastair chuckled. “His mother wouldn't hear of it.”

The pictures were something indeed. He didn’t have a quarter as many with his dad, or his mom, even, because any instance in which he wasn’t by himself, he was with Davey.

The pictures changed in tone by the time Holden was nine or ten. Just at as adolescence was approaching. There didn’t seem to be as many best friends pictures, hardly any with real warmth. 

Until in his teens, where there seemed to be an outright air, while not of sadness, of distance somehow, and he knew it was around then Alastair and Cecelia had separated and divorced. And Holden had been subjected more and more to Alastair’s affairs and philosophies about them.

But all the later pictures, especially after he joined his family’s firm, Holden had matured into a vision of beauty and charm. He looked happy, deceptively easy and confident. With his parents, his colleagues, at parties. The Holden he had met. The heart stealer.

He glanced at Alastair, who had long since stopped commenting on the pictures.

“He’s changed so much,” Alastair said now. “I would never have imagined that wanting to be with someone would do this to Holden. I feel I barely know him. And I’ll be frank with you, I held you responsible for that. Only because I was worried that you weren’t— well, that you weren’t good enough for him, frankly. But I think you do a great job with him, Sean. A great job.”

“Thank you.”

Alastair nodded, distantly.

“When did you realize he was gay?” he asked him, sitting back.

Alastair laughed. “Listen, I didn’t think it was funny back then. The portrayal of homosexuals back then was nothing short of out of control psychopathy. But I looked at him, and I thought about what I was being informed of in the media, and it didn’t add up. And that was that. He was my son, and I didn’t care what anybody else was doing.”

He nodded, listening. “So when did you know?”

Alastair gave him a slightly impish look, that at that moment made him a replica of his son. “You ever heard of the show, The Six Million Dollar Man?”

He started laughing, dropping his head back on the sofa and unable to stop. Alastair nodded, shook his head and sighed.

Eventually he was able to catch a breath, wipe his eyes. “So what did Cecelia think?”

“Oh, you know Ce. I didn’t bring it up to her because… well, I guess I was defensive about it. Defensive _of_ him. He was only six or seven when I discovered this, mind you. Though there was no room for mistake when you found your young son kissing a freeze frame on TV.”

“No,” he groaned.

“Oh, yeah. Well, one day, maybe about a week later, Ce turns to me at the breakfast table and while buttering toast, says, Darling, it appears that our son might be homosexual.”

They both cracked up, shaking their heads.

“What did you say?”

“I asked her what gave her the idea. She said she found him sitting on the back stairs in the garden, his arm around some other little boy’s shoulder and the boy apparently quite blissfully at rest in Holden’s embrace.”

He felt himself blushing, smilingly, too knowing of the feeling.

“And she felt what about it,” he asked Alastair.

Alastair blew air between his lips. “Listen, we Wilsons, we go back in California, but we worked hard to get where we are today. Cecelia’s family on the other hand, the Hadleys, they don’t even remember where their money came from. I don’t think she knows or cares about the perception of the outside world to anything except the projection of power and wealth.”

He nodded, all things he had always assumed. 

“For better or worse,” he told Alastair. “It made all the difference to Holden’s sense of confidence. He’s one of the biggest things in the LGBT community and it’s mainly because of this. He just gets stuff done.”

“We’re very proud of him for that.” Alastair glanced at him. “You’re both doing great. And I can’t speak for Cecelia, but right now I’m the one that’s screwing up.”

“You’re not. You’re just seeing a more vulnerable side of him than you or Cecelia are used to and you’re itching to fix it. That’s what’s giving you this feeling like you’re screwing up. But this is not your move to execute.”

Alastair turned a somewhat understanding look at him. “But I put the play in motion, huh?”

“Right. You called the play, passed the ball, and now it’s time for a simple downfield catch.” He shook his head for emphasis. “Not your move to execute.”

Alastair looked at the albums. “You know, he called me last night.”

He couldn’t say he was all that surprised to hear it. A lot of furniture had been bumped into last night.

“He told me if I or his mother upset either of you, we wouldn’t be invited to the wedding.”

He took a breath. Holden could probably be persuaded back from a decision like that, but it wouldn’t be a fun prospect for anyone that valued low stress levels.

“Well,” he said to Alastair. “You and Cecelia should try not to upset him this weekend, right?”

Alastair nodded, not seeming too concerned about it. “It’s just that— well, it’s hard to fathom that he wants to get married after everything he’s seen in this home. But harder to believe that _marriage,_ of all things, it what’s coming between us.” Alastair’s eyes were on the albums. “Impossible to believe.”

“Weddings make people crazy,” he said blandly.

Alastair threw him a look, at the intentional colorless platitude, and as he had hoped, started chuckling.

“Look,” he told him. “I knew him for three years and he never once told me he loved me. I knew he loved me, knew it with every fibre of my being. But getting him to have enough trust that I wouldn’t use it against him, well, that took time. You’ve had a lifetime of things both of you need to correct. So give it a little time. Pressure on him is the worst thing in the world. You know that.”

Alastair was nodding. 

It was remarkable. The man knew just a few short weeks ago would have had a few sharp things to say about that. Now Alastair just nodded. He really had undergone a transformation from that meeting with his son. Well, he could relate. Holden was the sweetest person living but for better or worse, he really could misplace a filter or two, and when he had heard him call him Mr. Straight Quarterback of the Year out of fear and anger last year, it had sent him into a transformation as well.

He knew what had worked for him, but like he had told Holden, the situation was reversed. Alastair loved his son very much, and when it was time for Holden to have him come sit at a table and answer to that love, Holden would be the one to call all the shots. Holden just wasn’t ready to assert that power yet.

Alastair had been silent for a while, still looking at the photos, and he couldn’t help but sneak a look at him, wondering how it must feel for a man of his stature, a billionaire real estate mogul with the world at his command, to eat humble pie.

*


	2. Chapter 2

Saturday morning came in cooled and clear, a continuation of the great weather they were having that week. And from what he understood, Johnston was experiencing a heat wave. It had been a mild winter anyway.

The suite’s bedroom picture windows overlooked the back gardens of Holden’s family home, rolling into the distance where green hills and stately estates took over the horizon. Everything in view, right or left, looked premeditated and picture perfect. Startling, the degree to which anyone might go to preserve a certain appearance.

It was a good visual to bear in mind going into their meeting with Cecelia.

At last, the day had come. No more running, no more waiting for phone calls, no more avoiding texts. Today they were going to begin the journey to their wedding.

A pair of sleep heavy arms wrapped themselves about his bare torso. He held still as Holden glued himself to his back, his hand sinking into the front of his pajama bottoms. The warm scratching began. He smiled and lowered his head.

When there was no peep for quite some time, thinking Holden had fallen back asleep standing up, he turned his face to him. “Good morning, beautiful.”

There was a short, hoarse response.

“How was your night?”

Holden was silent for a moment. Then he whispered, “I woke up thinking I was having a nightmare where I’d been called to my dad’s house and was listening to him and my mother talking and talking…”

Holden stopped talking. The gentle scratching continued. The grey air seemed to enter the room and wrap itself around them.

“It’ll be over soon,” he promised.

Holden just sighed. Then he slowly began planting fuzzy kisses along the back of his head, while he returned his gave to the gardens and prayed like any quarterback about to make a Hail Mary pass.

*

They descended to the ground floor after nine that morning, Holden having been ready for some time but obviously refusing to go down unless he was with him. So he did some push ups and planks while Holden had coffee and worked in the suite’s living room, then returned to join him for a shower that delayed their going down for another hour or so.

When they reached the expanse of foyer, the windows open and a spectacularly lovely breeze setting the curtains in a dance, Alastair appeared at the front doors, in a black track suit and sneakers and looking like he might have just come from a morning run, and informed them that Cecelia had moved their meeting from that morning to two p.m. And for them to please go ahead and have lunch without her.

Holden stopped walking, headed toward a small living room which he suspected was where the meeting should have taken place, and turned to look at his dad. The anger in them was not pleasant to see at all.

“Is this some kind of a setup? To spend more time here with you?”

“Of course not, I would never do anything so pathetic.”

He had been coming down behind Holden, now he simply kept moving until he was partially blocking Holden’s view of his dad, like Holden had done to him the previous evening. Which, Holden immediately got and backed down, backed away.

“Thanks,” he said to Alastair. “When do you think she’ll be coming by?”

“She said at two.”

Holden was silent behind him. He thanked Alastair again, said they’d see him soon, and slipped his arm around Holden’s stiff waist. 

“Didn’t you say you wanted to pay someone a visit this weekend?”

Holden’s jaw worked a little. Then he relaxed, cast him a sad look, he certainly wasn’t kidding about not wanting to be there, and pulled out his phone. A Blackberry.

—

Holden’s old nanny seemed to him to have the most normal of families. He’d begun wondering why Holden didn’t spend more time with them and get a sense of the normalcy he so craved, but eventually he saw why. 

They obviously loved having him around. They shouted and teased each other about him. They doted on him as much as with their own members. And Holden, in top form, was in everyone’s business like it was going out of style. He updated himself on school grades of the younger, not to mention reluctant to divulge, family members. He was huddled in small groups, on his Blackberry friending and defriending and following on social networks according to recommendations. 

But there was nevertheless something there. A line that kept Holden not quite on one side, but a little bit so. Holden was still their boss’s son. One day to be the boss, part of the apparatus that hired a good number of them as domestic workers, landscapers, pool boys, and when done with college, at Wilson Realty.

The families had intertwined a long time ago, but it was still, at core, a business partnership. Aside, that was, from Holden and the old woman. She was like a beloved school teacher, always believing in him. Always there to give him a hug. Knowing all the problems at hime, but unable to follow him home and fix them.

Mikey wasn’t there, now old enough to have joined the staff. He’d be gone in two years, when he finished a vocational course, after which it would be one of the other kids in the family to take his place. Holden then pointed out which one from last year, cousin of Mikey’s, who had refused to wash his hand after he had shaken it last summer. 

There were the also professional ones who stayed until retirement, one of whom was Alvarez. Also Juan Miguel, but who just went by the family name. He was Alastair’s chef. Funny as hell, and the resident senior Chargers fan.

It was barely eleven in the morning and they were gorging on hot tamales and chocolate mango ice cream. He had never even heard of such a thing. But Alvarez knew his stuff. And knew his boss’s son.

As soon as they got Holden settled with the cast iron stomach food, he and most of the family talked football. And he noticed they were trying to make Holden laugh. They seemed to really understand the family.

It wasn’t that difficult a task because while they argued about the season and he pretended to not have most of the team and player related answers they wanted—he had no desire to be quoted on Facebook—the old woman was chugging Mexican beer from a frosted mug. And wouldn’t let Holden have any.

“What exactly is Mexican beer,” he asked them, having chosen to abstain for the sake of their meeting later.

“This from the guy who lives in San Diego,” Alvarez said, with a shake of his head.

“No, seriously, what is it?” he asked laughing.

“It’s beer made in Mexico,” Holden said drolly.

“This from the guy who lives with Mexicans!” Alvarez cried.

It took some time for that lament to die down, after which he still had no idea what made the beer distinctive. And the conversation had moved on.

“Hey, how’s Petey, by the way?” Alvarez suddenly said, and to his surprise that was the thing that made Holden crack up the most all morning.

—

There were three members of the family who were two lesbians and one gay kid. They wanted hugs—from him, because they said they got them from Holden all the time—and they gave them pictures and hugs. And then it extended into full family portraits from there. Holden’s smiles became tinged, and no amount of pulling them wider to make them sunnier was making sunnier.

*

“Who’s Petey?” he asked Holden as he drove them back along the tall hedged, secretive roads.

To his curiosity, when he glanced at him, Holden had turned red.

“He’s a friend of mine. You-you’ve met him. At my condo back in January. W-well, you didn’t meet him, you just— passed him when you were… entering.”

Holden’s voice had descended into nothing more than an mutter. He glanced again and found him staring out the window, his flush down his neck. 

He had some vague memory of what Holden was talking about. But he left that one alone.

They pulled into the estate, up the driveway and around the fountain to the motor park. He parked, stopped for a moment, and slowly turned to Holden. 

“That was a blast,” he said, reaching over and taking his hand. “It’s been a while since I saw you work your magic on people. Thanks for taking me.”

“I ought to be thanking you,” Holden said, his eyes out the window and on his family home. “I needed that.”

“But we’re having a good time in there, aren’t we? Your dad’s been great.”

Holden was motionless, still staring at the house, and after a moment, nodded.

He didn’t say anything more, just looked at Holden. With each passing moment, Holden seemed to grow…paler. Something seemed to be prickling at him. He hadn’t been like this yesterday, so he assumed it was Cecelia.

He popped the door handle and asked Holden to come out of the car. Holden went out the other side slowly, and together they met at the trunk of the car. Holden was already leaning against the trunk. 

He spread his legs on either side of him and entwined their fingers. Then waited for him to talk. To tell him what was on his mind like he used to.

Holden seemed to sense that, giving him a look that was fully apologetic.

“I know I’ve been a clam for weeks now. And I’m sorry.”

“I don’t want you to ever feel pressured to talk to me when you don’t want to,” he told him. “Just know that I’m here whenever you do want to.”

Holden looked down to their side, at their tangled fingers. “You’re so good to me. I didn’t even know I wanted that in life.”

“What, you wanted some guy to be mean to you? Show me the fucker.”

Holden snorted, gave him a sidelong glance that sent his heart into a gallop. 

Then Holden sighed heavily, looked at the house, and said, “I’m just worried, Sean. They are very good at ruining things.”

“They can’t ruin us,” he said, not even letting it stand for a second. “And listen, they get along, right? And we get along. So think of it as a buddy system. If one of us falls, we pick the other up. If one of them does something crazy, the other’ll set them back in line. Alastair’s on our side,” he said gently.

And that seemed to penetrate Holden’s fog of concern. Holden glanced at him and nodded. Then made to straighten from the car. He brought the hands he had wrapped in his own to his lips, kissed his fingers, his engagement ring.

“We have a future together, okay?” he said.

“Oh, nothing’s stopping that,” Holden said with a hard edge. Then he took him by the waist, pulling him to his side as he moved off the car. “Come on.”

—

Cecelia arrived at two sharp.

They were since done with a light lunch, Alastair almost back to his normal self with the simple happiness of having had two meals in a row with Holden. They had the meal in one of the smaller sun rooms, more casually than dinner, clear outdoor light filling the room and eating sandwiches while Alastair had them look at blown up photographs, old and new, and land survey maps of the vineyard he wanted to buy in Santa Barbara. Since there had been the no-go on actually going up there that day.

Holden hovered behind him, munching an oversized watercress and curried egg salad on French bread, and doing his utmost not to look enchanted. Because if the place really did look as good as the color and light saturated pictures, it was exactly where his babies needed to see their grandpa in the summers when school was out.

He chewed on his sandwich and kept his eyes riveted like with bolts on the center table, refusing for Holden to see even a glint in them.

By the time Cecelia arrived, the three of them were more relaxed with each other than they had been all weekend. When Alastair looked at Holden and smiled, Holden flushed with what was obviously, well, happiness, stiffly pretended nothing was happening and ate his sandwich. 

Compared to the shrinking and shying away of past weeks, a huge step forward.

Cecelia knocked lightly and entered the room. Lightly touching her silver bangs to shift them from her eyes, she simply said, “Good afternoon, boys. I hope I’m not interrupting.”

—

They convened at a table with several chairs. It looked like what the French royal family might have sat at to plot who would next take the throne. It didn’t comfort him, when they had taken seats it was what he had to push from his mind.

So far, the tension was at low levels. Since morning he had brought down the wedding book and their leather binder from Soirée. Now, upon sitting, they been going over what the planner recommended parents be involved in. It was all traditional stuff, consultations on everything, especially if the parents were paying for the wedding.

But he and Holden were paying for the wedding, and what both parents had told Holden was that they wanted and planned on “doing something” before the wedding. 

That was the major one. And he wanted it out of the way first, hoping it would calm frayed and insulted feelings and set a nicer tone for the meeting. So after going over the preliminaries and getting no objections, he moved into choppier waters.

“So we spoke,” he said, indicating Holden, “and we agreed that we would very much like for you to be a major part of our wedding,” well, Holden hadn’t said “very much like” but had told him it was fine that he felt that way, “and we would be honored if you would host the rehearsal dinner.”

Alastair nodded, his hands clasped and letting out a relieved sigh. Cecelia tipped her head in acknowledgment. 

It was part of the traditional options of the groom’s parents, and he didn’t think either parent had been prepared to face the contention that they _wouldn’t_ host. And it was a major victory that Holden had agreed.

Holden was sitting to his right, his demeanor tense and his hand under the table, clutched to his. He was quiet.

Now for the smaller ones. Rather, the ones neither Wilson really seemed to consider of great importance.

“We also would be honored if you would maintain the gift registry,” he told them. “We’re not taking gifts, just donations to several charities, including the foundation. And we couldn’t think of anyone better to handle it than the two of you.”

Both parents acknowledged again with tips of their heads.

“And lastly, we’d like for you to tailor and dress the ring bearer. We have a flower girl, my niece, who you’ll be meeting soon I’m sure, but we haven’t picked a ring bearer yet. Once we do, we’ll hand him over to you for care and clothing.”

He finished, with a cordial smile. Alastair looked emotionally affected. Though his glances at Holden went unreturned.

“Thank you, Sean,” Cecelia suddenly said, sounding neatly delighted. 

And _his_ glance across the table assured him that she was well aware that Holden contributed to none of this. He played offense, so he knew that knowledge of defense was the surest skill needed to win a game. And he knew that him being the defensive formation she needed to tackle had since been Cecelia’s own strategy.

“You… _both_ of you,” she corrected, “have made us very happy. Am I correct in saying so, Alastair?”

“Absolutely,” Alastair said hoarsely.

“Do you have anything you’d like to add?” she asked him.

“Well, I think they’ve covered it all,” Alastair said. “We’ll consult with you on the location of the rehearsal dinner. If you’re changing the wedding venue we’ll look for something around wherever the new place’ll be. We still have a couple options open for venues, right Ce?”

“Three,” she said crisply.

“Ah, there you go. Plenty of options available then.”

Holden had stopped outright clutching his hand and was now lacing their fingers. It was a subtle, more hopeful form of nervousness.

Cecelia took a deep breath and sat up. “Well,” she said. “I have something to add,” and turned to the empty chair between her and Alastair. 

The chair wasn’t empty though. It held her gleaming black leather handbag, which contained a gleaming black leather folder. She withdrew it and placed the folder on the table. 

Then she opened the folder, picked up one of several identical copies of a one-inch thick document, and in an efficient process, placed one each before him and Holden. She then slipped one to Alastair before closing the folder and settling into her seat again.

“All right,” she said. “Shall we start?”

Everyone around him, being Alastair and Holden, had turned to stone.

Curious, more than even baffled, he used his free hand and turned the document to better face him. 

The top sheet was blank. So he turned the page. There was a short letter, on the letterhead of a law firm, and he skipped it because it didn’t occur to him that it might be meant for him. He turned to the next page. 

And at the top, capitalized and underlined, were the words, _“Premarital Agreement Setting Financial Property Terms Upon Termination of Marriage.”_

Even when he had read the words he had no idea where to put them, where they might belong in his mind or his world, so he simply pulled his eyes down and read what appeared to be a bulleted preamble of mutual understandings.

That he was marrying Holden Wilson under no duress. That he understood that the marriage was based on love but that unhappiness could result, and in such an event his subsequent behavior would be governed only by the provisions of this agreement. That he was for no reason whatsoever during the marriage permitted to contact any past individuals who had had previous romantic liaisons with Holden—”See Attached List.” That in the event of infidelity he was to reference the penalties contained in this agreement. That he was never to ask Holden to keep only one home which he deemed as his.

It went on.

His lungs had stopped working several bullet points ago. It wasn’t possible with the block of concrete that was now sitting in them.

*

His eyes were on his parents, but he wasn’t seeing them. And then he was on his feet, but wasn’t aware of how he had come to be standing. 

All he was aware of was that Sean had turned to a statue, his normally golden complexion drained of color. His eyes had zeroed in on the black 12-point print, the skin around them showing fine line, he was focusing so hard.

“What the fuck…” he heard him whisper.

He couldn’t stop him from reading the words unless he wished to yank the document from him. And from the way Sean’s hand was pressed down on its corner, trying it would injure Sean. 

He took this all in peripherally. His head was a blank and only the still, frozen frames of his parents occupied it. It was possibly one of the clearest moments he had ever had. Beside him was the man he loved. The life he wanted. 

Before him were guilt and selfishness. 

And then him, in between, wanting a compromise. 

He stepped back from the table. “Sean, get up, please.”

Sean slowly pushed back his chair and stood up. His mother closed her eyes, put her fingers to her forehead and minutely shook her head.

“Holden,” she said.

“I wouldn’t try it, mom,” he said coldly. “You don’t see me looking confused.”

“Darling—”

“Cecelia,” his father said sternly. “Enough.” 

He was only waiting for Sean to get to his side so he could leave. Sean came to him and looking down at it, took his hand. 

He lifted a finger at his parents.

“Neither of you will be at our wedding. Don’t _touch_ anything Sean just gave to you.”

He felt a deep sigh pull through Sean. 

He turned, and without needing to drag him out of there, Sean followed him out of the room.

“We’re leaving,” he told him in the hallway. 

“I understand.”

He felt Sean gently release his hand, and he all but flew up the staircase. Sean followed up much more slowly.

Sean caught up with him as he was dumping clothes into his weekend bag. He was so tense he felt that there was glass in his ears, on his fingertips, and that the wrong word, the wrong touch and he would shatter. 

Sean slowly came to him and wrapped his arms around his body, pulling him close and holing him tight. He placed his forehead on his temple, making them both perfectly still. And then he said, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize for them,” he said, his voice tight with the effort it took to speak. “Please don’t let them do that to us.”

Sean was quiet.

He was staring at a pile of shirts. But he was seeing the words of the contract running in a straight unwavering line through his vision. “That isn’t me anymore,” he whispered. “Please, I want you to understand that.”

“You’re crazy if you think I don’t,” Sean whispered back.

“That’s what they don’t understand.”

“I know, sweetheart.”

There didn’t seem to be any more words in his heart. Sean’s body was warm, solid. But Sean’s heart was beating, very hard, very strongly. 

He shut his eyes.

Sean kissed his temple. Then behind his ear.

“Finish packing. I’ll bring your car around.” 

*

He left Holden and made his way back down the grand staircase. At the bottom he took a long, hard breath and looked toward the other side of the house. 

He had to know that this entire weekend hadn’t been a lie. 

He headed back to the sun room and found it empty. From farther down the hallway, he heard voices and followed them. At its end, he found a room with the door ajar. It appeared to be a study. Inside were Alastair and Cecelia.

Alastair was standing behind a big desk, Cecelia seated calmly at the chair in front of it. She sat forward with her elbows on the table and her fingers lightly laced. She was looking steely at her former husband, and he found himself almost out of bodily marveling that he had thought Holden barely resembled her. Holden hadn't gotten his ability to shut off his emotions from Alastair.

“You can’t tell me you’re against this all of a sudden,” Cecelia said. “This was _our_ decision, not just mine.”

“Yes, but you shouldn’t have done it this way. When it comes to Sean, he needs special handling.” 

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Alastair. And men accuse women of being emotional creatures. If he’s so confident in the success of their marriage, why is it such an issue simplifying matters with a prenup? We had one. Frankly, I don’t know anyone who doesn’t.”

“It’s—” Alastair cut himself off and sighed, and sat down behind the desk and put his hand to his forehead. “I wish you had told me. I might have figured something out with Sean.”

She didn’t quite roll her eyes, the mention of his name an obvious irritant to her. 

“I’m well aware that Holden and you had some kind of bonding experience recently, but it would be a mistake to let that be your guiding point. Nothing has changed. I’m sorry I’m not being sensitive enough for all of you, but Holden is our son. We both know what he’s like when it comes to men and it’s our job to protect him. Sean could be the most wonderful person in the world. But that’s not really my concern.” 

“Things have changed,” Alastair said, interrupting her. “Not our responsibility to him, I understand. But things are different than in our time. They’re more… _open_ to each other these days. We could have included them in the process, or— let them figure it out and— I don’t know, maybe avoided all of this.”

Cecelia threw up her hands, sitting back. “Fine. I’ll be the bad guy.”

“That’s not what I’m saying at all.”

Turning from the door, he slowly made his way back to the expansive foyer. He stood in it and glanced up at the second floor, listening to hear if Holden was coming. There wasn’t that much to pack. But there was perfect silence from the second floor of the house. 

He slipped his hand in his pocket, pulled the keys to Holden’s Lexus and looked briefly at them in the palm of his hand. He had taken them from Holden the previous evening with such hope and positivity. He had been so sure of this weekend’s outcome.

But they had taken their chance with a wildcard.

_What a fucking disaster._

Pushing through the open front doors, he slowly descended the stone steps staring at a sight that took him a second to understand.

And then when he did, he quickly glanced over his shoulder and prayed to God that Holden wasn’t coming out at that moment.

The four lawyers—he guessed that they were lawyers because he’d had a decade of seeing them coming in for negotiations—each greeted him by name as they passed. 

He muttered a greeting, pretending to be looking at the car’s key, and turned to watch them file into the quiet house.

He didn’t slow his sudden beeline for the Lexus, getting in and hurriedly starting it up. Expecting any second to actually hear Holden finally, vocally, blow a gasket.

But no such moment came, and he concentrated on pulling the car adjacent to the bottom of the steps and popping the trunk before he got out.

Holden was trotting down the steps, Mikey close behind with both bags. Holden didn’t look right or left as he exited the house. Didn’t glance behind him past the foyer into the house, where the lawyers had gone.

He mentally hurried Holden along.

Mickey came toward the trunk while Holden made straight for the passenger door, giving him a quick, sad, apologetic look that made his heart start to ache.

“Thanks, Mikey,” he said, patting the kid’s shoulder. Mikey told him he was welcome and went back inside without another word.

He moved as fast as he could to the driver side, got in and started the car. 

Holden’s gaze was directly ahead, through the windshield. 

But he didn’t seem to be seeing the additional cars parked there. He quickly put the car in gear and rolled around the fountain, nosing it toward the gates, his prayer still going. When he had the lawyers’ cars in the rear view, he accelerated down the drive.

*

They returned to Holden’s condo and Holden remained standing for nearly an hour. He wasn’t talking. Just slowly pacing the lower floor, going from one room to the next.

He seemed in control of his anger. He appeared very calm. He was clearly deep in thought.

He sat on the sofa in the living room, knowing there was no way to make this easier for Holden. Alastair had taken everything Holden had resembling trust. He knew there was nothing more Holden could give. And there was nothing he could do except be there and give him all his support and accept whatever decision Holden decided to take.

—

Whatever decision, that was, except the one Holden actually took. 

But that madness didn’t descend until Sunday afternoon.

*


	3. Chapter 3

Holden’s living room balcony was a glass room of clear, cool light. It was Sunday morning and he was reclined on the love seat, his feet up on the coffee table, on Skype with his sisters. 

He’d briefed them on the weekend, the highlights and the very, very low lights. Twin looks of total disbelief had long since made it look like he was talking to a brand new wallpaper on his laptop’s desktop.

When he had finished, he just sat there, pulling on his ear lobe, with not much else to add. 

Holden meanwhile had been maintaining his nearly unbelievable silence from the previous afternoon. He’d kept a distance, knowing he couldn’t leave him alone but not wanting to be in the way. Understanding that this was most likely the decision that would define their summer and the remaining months to their wedding.

No word yet from Alastair, none expected from Cecelia. But they’d—the three of them at least—would have to talk soon about what Holden had decided where they were concerned.

Well, he thought now. He had not much else to add, except one thing, which he maybe had to get out of him so it wouldn’t be inside him waiting to come out at an inopportune moment.

“Had I signed that thing,” he told them, resolutely pushing the feelings the preamble had generated far down. “I would have lost my soul and the soul of my relationship with him. I’m telling you no agent agreement, no endorsement deal could compare. And they say you sell your soul for those.”

“Sean,” Allison said in a whisper. “It’s a good thing you didn’t tell mom and dad. Mom especially. She already wants to bundle Holden up in swaddling cloth and she probably would’ve flown out to LA and picked one hell of a fight with Cecelia.”

He sighed, hard. 

“Where is he right now?” Kay asked.

”He’s somewhere inside. He’s been real quiet.”

“So do you think he’s not going to have them to the wedding?” she asked.

He shook his head and shrugged, not sure what to tell them. Not sure of much except that he had told Holden he would go with whatever he wanted for their wedding. He hadn’t made that promise lightly.

“Oh, my God, poor Holden,” she said, looking at her wife with a tight expression. 

Allison didn’t look back, but he was sure something unspoken was passing between them. He put it down to them having been the first family members to host Holden when he had gone to Johnston. They had taken him as a younger brother as well. He knew how bad they had to be feeling.

“So…people get that much money just to turn other people into their slaves?” Kay said ponderously. 

“Employees,” he corrected. “Holden’s words.”

“What’s gonna happen now, Sean?” Allison asked.

He shrugged, slowly shook his head.

*

He was in his bedroom, where grey morning light had filled the place. He was sitting on his bed staring at two very different things. The first was his iPad, and his secure cloud account. Selected pictures. 

It was a cool morning, still cool as if a weightless winter had come to LA. And grey as if it meant to layer him, give him a memory of a morning in which he had experienced a perfect goodbye. For weeks now, he had refused to look at that moment again, to remember anything to do with it, or what came after, when the love of his life had taken him into a secret place and had completed the job of ruining his former life. He hadn’t understood then why that goodbye had been perfect, but now he understood. The farewell had not been to his family. It had been to old things. 

Negative things. Small minded and cynical things. And Sean had taken him to that secret place that morning not because he’d wanted to merely show him something. But because Sean had known that that was where they belonged. They were magic together, and it was insane, crazy, stupid that he had let anyone, absolutely anyone, take that away from him.

The other thing he had on the bed was his wedding invitation to Kate Hazeltine. The one item he had held on to and refused to let circumstance dictate how he would experience it.

It took him much longer than it should have to finally see the connection in both things.

*

His chat with his sisters since ended, Kay lamenting not being able to give Holden all the cuddles she wanted, to which he’d told her to take a number, he was in Holden’s kitchen taking his mind off things he couldn’t control.

He was thinking so many things and staring at the exorbitant juicer Holden had, which was presently hard at whisper-quiet work making him green juices, when a soft thud came somewhere nearby.

He glanced at the kitchen entrance as Holden came and stood in it. Holden had showered that morning and was in a T-shirt and trousers, but now he looked somehow… different.

There was electricity in his eyes. 

“I’m going to Johnston.”

He didn’t feel any reaction.

It was somehow both the last and yet the only thing he had expected to hear from Holden.

“Don’t try and stop me.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it, sweetheart.” 

He reached over and switched off the juicer. Kara was expecting a sit down this week to prep for the big interviews, and he had meant to drive the golf tournament information to Alastair’s office at the Country Club. 

But the prep session could wait and he could have the packet sent from Johnston. Holden had worked from there for two weeks, he could do the same. All he had to do, really, was take his offseason binder.

“I’ll just get a couple of things—”

“I’m going alone.”

Now he felt it. Like a kick in the chest. Knowing, somehow _knowing_ that this had also been coming.

“Sean, I know what you’re gonna say—” 

“You don’t know what I’m gonna say,” he said, cutting him off, closing every compartment on the juicer and shoving the cut fruit, cutting board and all, into the corner. He turned fully to him. “All you should know is, you’re not doing that.”

“Sean—”

“No,” he repeated. “You’re not. Holden, I don’t care if your parents are insane,” he told him, looking straight at him. “You told me for a long time and— I’ll admit, I really didn’t get that. But I’m not letting them do this to us. To the time we have left before we have to get back to our real fucking lives. _Before_ I have to go back on the road for six fucking months. Before we get _married._ ”

“Sean, I have to go.”

“I’m hearing you, but you’re not listening to me. What kind of fucking relationship do we have, if now that we’re finally together, on the same page as you used to constantly tell me we weren’t, what’d we have if we’re spending less trouble free time with each other now than when we couldn’t even manage a commitment? You’re not leaving this house without me.”

“Sean, I know you want me to top you.”

For a long time what Holden had said didn’t register. 

He just kept waiting for Holden to add to the sentence and make it not say what he thought he’d heard.

But the direct stare from Holden didn’t change.

“We both know that’s what you want.”

His mouth was open, and he thought he was speaking but no words were coming out.

Holden took a step forward from the kitchen’s entrance and and he lost his breath.

It had come out in a small shuddering breath and it made Holden stop. And embarrassed him when their eyes met, because he had seen his long legs move and had thought for one seriously hot second that Holden had been about to do something right there in the kitchen.

He raised a hand in protest and to say something.

“Sean, you want us to get back what we lost in the fall. What _I_ lost, and for me to make you feel the way I did back then. You want me to have confidence in my sexuality. I want the same things. But we’re never gonna get there with me unless I face a little bit of who I’ve become. Of what _you_ helped make me. So either you let me go to Johnston, on my own, to figure that out…” 

Holden broke his speech at this point and swung a finger back and forth between them. “Or we continue this game of hide and seek between my needs and your you know what.”

He had been standing with his arms folded across his chest for some time now, his fingers digging into his right elbow. He was breathing as though he had just been asked to run up a short flight of steps, and was now standing at the top, waiting to be told what to do next.

Holden’s electrified blue gaze was calm on him.

“Up to you,” Holden said in conclusion.

—

Holden’s flight was a private jet landing at Des Moines International that evening. 

He was being held in a way he had never been before in public. And never before by Holden. Holden’s hands at the small of his back were locked, pressing him in a way that made every breath feel like they were naked. His arm was wrapped around Holden’s neck, the other braced against the terminal’s glass so that he wouldn’t put it too around Holden’s shoulder. Their mouths were raw, their tongues coated with their imagination, working to express everything they were feeling. Holden had been trying to kiss him goodbye. But it wasn’t goodbye he wanted. 

He was burning up inside, consuming him to quench it. Holden pulled back gently, repeatedly, breaking the kiss within his arms until he made himself stop, pressing his face to his, and Holden stood still, breathing. When he had conveyed enough that he wouldn’t stop him, Holden began a series of small, soft kisses that was worse on his emotional state than everything combined. 

Ten minutes later Holden was at the terminal doors blowing him a kiss, his bag in hand, his electric blue winter coat on top it. Hands on his hips, he simply nodded at him. His coach would recognize his stance. All he could ever do when a defensive blitz had gotten past their wall. And he had had to unexpectedly take it in his chest. Even with all the padding in the world, it hurt like a motherfucker.

He stood in the terminal of the private airfield and watched the aircraft lift into the tangerine sky. 

This was different from January. It absolutely was.

His phone chimed in his pocket as he turned from the glass. He looked at it to see his mom calling. Unlocking the phone, he brought it to his ear with a deep controlled breath.

“Mom.”

“Is he on his way?”

He told her Holden was, lowering his head and trying to make it sound like he was just keeping his voice down in a semi-public place.

“That’s great, dear,” she said gently.

He started down at the concrete floor. His parents had never coddled him growing up, but with his mom and dad there was never a shortage of hugs and cuddles when he needed it.

“Take care of him, will you mom?” he said into the phone.

“Of course we will, sweetheart. Your father and I miss you terribly. We can’t wait to see you too.”

He was nodding, feeling a million times better, even though he knew she was also just trying to make him feel that way. She gave him a kiss over the phone. He told her he missed them too and would see them as soon as this was all sorted out. 

A few seconds passed after he had lowered the phone and was just standing there telling himself to head back and face the week, and his phone chimed again. He looked at it and was not surprised at all that it was Alastair Wilson. 

They did have tabs on Holden’s movements. 

“Hi, Alastair,” he said, unable the help the formality of his tone.

“Hello, Sean. How’re you holding up?”

 _Wouldn’t need to be, Al,_ he thought, somewhat unfairly. 

And whoever had informed Alastair that Holden had taken a flight must have also told him that in parting, there hadn’t been anything close to a fight between them. Otherwise he was quite sure Alastair would be asking something different.

“I’m doing fine,” he told him. “But you know, Al, that didn’t go so well.”

“Ahhh,” Alastair said, in an incredibly jocular tone. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll figure something out. Just keep your chin up, right?”

He pulled down the phone and briefly stared at it.

Considering that Holden had banned them from their wedding, how Alastair had appeared when last he saw him yesterday afternoon, this might as well be someone else.

“…and spend some quality time together,” Alastair was saying when he brought the phone back up. “Both sides probably need to be in our corners for a little while anyway. All right, take it easy, Sean. I’ll be in touch.”

The connection had ended and he had no idea what the hell had just happened.

Immediately dropping it from his mind, he opened his messages and tapped on Holden’s name. In the compose box, he tapped and left his finger there.

Was it right to do this? Make Holden feel that he couldn’t give him breathing space when he needed it. Giving him the impression that he couldn’t tolerate being separated from him. Holden coming after him in Johnston hadn’t been the same thing. Then Holden had been trying to salvage their relationship. This reminded him too much of how clingy he had acted making phone calls last winter. 

But he missed him already and he wanted him to know.

Not knowing what the right approach was in a situation like this, he stood there staring at this phone.

But as soon as his mind drifted back to how Holden had kissed him just minutes ago, to his promises that he wouldn’t stay more than a week—a long as fuck week—he realized that they really were in a different place in their relationship. 

They understood each other better and it wasn’t clingy to let him know how much he meant to him.

So he composed a short text: _I’ll dream of you every night._

He was in Holden’s Lexus when his phone trilled with an incoming text. He set the keys between his legs and looked at his phone, which said: _Then I’ll see you soon, big guy._

He squeezed his eyes shut. This offseason could not get any worse.

*


	4. Chapter 4

He went straight from the airport to a movie theater. He’d gotten to the valet and reached toward the glove compartment for a hat before remembering that he was sitting in Holden’s car, not his own. He swore, considering just going home. Maybe going out for a swim instead. Or seeing if any of the guys were in town and could meet for a beer.

All of which turned him off so much he just sat there, his head on the back rest and his eyes forward. What he needed was to switch off his brain. And, he was holding up the valet line. He got out and collected a ticket.

When he entered Holden’s condo three hours later—the movie had been a two-and-half-hour Cold War spy thriller with an overblown love story, which had still looked tame as compared to their own never ending saga—he then and only then allowed himself to check his missed calls and messages.

He had a few, all the usual ones. None from Johnston.

One missed call from Alastair. Thankfully, Alastair still left voicemail.

“Hi, Sean,” Alastair said on the message. “Just calling to check up on you. Holden landed safely. Talk soon.”

He turned off his phone and left it on a side table. Then he went upstairs, and it was only after he’d walked the length of the wide hallway to the white doors of the master bedroom at the other end, walked in and said, “Hey, sweetheart,” that it came back that Holden wasn’t in the damn place.

He just remained at the doors, with his eyes closed, heaved a sigh and said, “Fuck.”

*

Johnston was _freeeeezing._ The heatwave was _gone._ Of course, of _course_ it was!

But inside him was what he envisioned in his mind as a large, glowing rock, like a piece of coal that had been stoked and blown on and fanned until it had gotten bigger, warmer, and was about to keep him safe.

Despite Sean’s grouchiness, Sean had started that process. He could still feel him giving him what he wanted, to comfort them both for this week long drought he had just imposed on them. But without Sean he couldn’t be doing this. He wouldn’t be doing this. And he was depending on that flame to keep going strong all the way.

He pulled into the street, listening to the familiar crunch of tires on snow, and looked at it. It was evening, home and neighborhood lights on up and down the street. Kids were playing in the snow. Parents were cautioning them to go easy on the icy patches. 

He pulled up to the curb and simply stopped driving, and sat with the car in park, staring down at the street.

Then he swallowed, blinking, not sure if he needed to clear his vision or the windshield. And finally he looked sideways at the house, almost afraid it wouldn’t be there.

But it was there. Kay’s Rover was there in front of it, as was Allison’s Altima. He turned and stared at all of it.

What had he been thinking? They had said to call, and he hadn’t. They had said to come, and he hadn’t. 

Why had it taken him so long to get here?

He was finally home.

As he watched, the doors to the house flew open and the first person out was Deena, screaming like a wildcat. He got out as quickly as he could, with just enough time to take up a stable position and caught her as she flew into his arms, screaming in his ear.

Behind her were Kay and Allison, Kay yelling his name over and over and waving her arms just as wildly as her kid, and Allison smiling at the door. He pulled Kay into such a tight hug that they were crushing Deena between them. And when Allison came over and put her arms around all of them, he squeezed his eyes shut and let out sharp, short breaths that did nothing whatsoever to stop him from crying.

*


	5. Chapter 5

On Monday morning, bright and early, he called his mom. He just sat on a kitchen stool, fighting off bad and good memories from this period two months ago, picked up his phone and unlocked the screen, going over his head and his tone as he tapped the VIP icon and tapped the second number.

It buzzed for an indecently long time. Then the call connected.

“Good morning,” he said with a smile. “And how’re we doing this morning, young lady?”

“Oh, Sean,” she said neatly. “He said I shouldn’t tell you anything and he’s right. You ran home for no good reason to speak of—”

“What, mom? I didn’t hear that.”

“—and we let you have all the room you wanted to sulk. But what he’s going through is _very_ serious, so we’re giving him the same courtesy we gave you.”

“Well, what if I show up like he did? Not that I plan to, but let’s just say what if?”

“Then I’d be sure to give you a big cuddle too. But he says his feelings for you are clouding his judgement, so I can’t say I’m for it. Just try and let him be for a few days.”

He stared at the stone floor. 

It had been his idea to go into Bel Air. It had been his point of view, and his point of action, that Holden should work to fix his relationship with his parents. And now the entire strategy had blown up in both their faces.

“Is he mad at me for… any reason, mom?”

“No he’s not, dear. Not at all. It’s not at all like what drove you two apart the last time. He just needs a little mothering.”

He nodded his understanding, grateful that his mother could be there for Holden. Telling himself already it was less than seven days to go. He’d be crazy if he couldn’t spend seven days without Holden just because it was the offseason. 

*

Alastair decided he shouldn’t be alone. That it wasn’t healthy.

So that Monday night he invited him to join him at a political fundraiser. He could also get a feel for the responses to the golf tournament there. And—speaking jovially, as if determined not to admit that he and his ex-wife had done anything wrong—wasn’t it fantastic that they were actually going to be able to spend a whole week together, “just like old times.”

He could have wept from self-pity.

He called Kara and told her that it would be great if they could move the interviews prep for later in the week.

“How’d the meeting in Bel Air go?” she immediately asked, her voice muffled by whatever she was eating.

She didn’t seem fazed that he was moving their sit down. But then she wouldn’t be one of the best if she did. Plus, if in the past year she got worked up every time he called her, she’d have sued him for emotional distress by now.

“It blew up in our fucking faces,” he stated frankly.

She stopped munching, but only for a second. “How’s Holden taking it?”

He thought about if for a second. “I think that remains to be seen.”

—

He went to Alastair’s political fundraiser. It could have been taking place anywhere. He honestly wasn’t even sure where he was at that moment. Someone’s mansion, in a hotel ballroom… he really didn’t know. Within minutes of arriving he looked at his phone, convinced himself that he should have at least called to make sure that Holden had landed safely, and went into his call log and tapped Holden’s number.

To his ecstatic surprise, Holden answered.

He plugged one ear and moved away from the bar area, where guests were buzzing over what to try.

Immediately he started to apologize to Holden, telling him that he understood what he needed to do and he was sorry if he’d made him feel pressured or had given him the wrong impression.

But it was hard hearing himself, much less Holden. “Sweetheart, where are you?” he called into the phone, the clatter of metal and the sound of raised voices only getting louder.

“At the elementary school,” Holden called back. “They’re having a show! Sean, did you know that Michelle is pregnant!” Holden yelled, sounding ecstatic. “She looks amazing! She’s about four months and she’s the cutest thing you’ve ever seen! Davey’s bumping into things worse than me!”

He took a long, slow breath, knowing that Holden wasn’t intentionally rubbing things in.

Folding one arm under the one holding the phone, he said, weakly, “Yeah. She told me, and uh, Davey and I talked about it that last night at my parents. Can you send me a pi—”

“Sean, I can’t hear you,” Holden called down the connection. “It’s so crazy over here. Deena’s running around in circles and Kay’s one of the organizers so— No, wait, don’t go!” Holden suddenly called, and it took a second to realize he wasn’t talking to him. “I’ll be right there! Sean, I gotta go.”

“When are you coming back?” he asked quickly, wanting to pick him up Sunday from the airport.

“Wednesday. I think I’ll be back by Wednesday or early Thursday if I can’t, but I’ll have to let you know. I dreamt of you last night, big guy,” Holden’s voice was suddenly growling warmly into his ear. “Talk soon.”

The connection ended. He pulled down his phone and stared miserably at it. Holden had just said Wednesday or Thursday. He hadn’t imagined that.

“Hey, there ya’are, Sean.” 

He looked over his shoulder to see Alastair coming over with a grey haired, actually rich looking man. Alastair, as far as he could tell, was doing an excellent job of looking and acting very normally. 

“Sean, I’d like you to meet an old friend. Great golfer. He says he’ll be in your tournament if you can partner him with Christina Aguilera.” 

Both Alastair and his friend exploded with laughter. He dropped his head, pretending only just then to be finishing up his call, pulling on a smile as he did so.

Fucking Davey couldn’t send him a picture of Michelle’s pregnancy. Nor Kay for that matter.

Both men ushered him back with them into the ballroom. A glance at the popular drinks bar reminded him they were at the Fairmont in Santa Monica.

—

“Well, you never really did get that Prince C’s a gunslinger. Doesn’t it come out during sex?”

It didn’t, actually. 

Except for October.

The patheticness of his situation was complete when Davey was in a more privileged position to point that out.

“What’s he up to?”

“He’s mostly hanging out with your mom and dad.”

“Yeah, but what’re they doing?”

“Hanging out,” Davey repeated, testily.

He massaged his temples, then covered his face. He lay quietly for long moments, alone on the sheets in Holden’s bed, only the leftover fragrance from Holden’s shower gel to keep him company. 

“I think they’re talking wedding stuff,” Davey added, perhaps out of sympathy.

He dropped his hand. “What, they’re talking about wedding arrangements?”

“I think so.”

He was surprised. And didn’t know what to think. Holden had all but developed an allergic reaction to anything wedding planning and, as far as he knew, hadn’t taken anything of Soirée’s.

“Well, did you see any wedding books?” he asked Davey.

“Um,” Davey said casually, sounding like he was out fishing and making a phone call while waiting for the trout to bite. “He has a book that’s… I wanna say a brown cover… with maybe…a couple on it?”

His eyebrows went up all the way. Holden had a copy of Soirée’s book with him?

“Hey, so when’re we gonna start talking best man stuff? I gotta call ‘em up at Bootleggers and get ‘em ready for a sweet, sweet bachelorette. You know what I’m talkin’ about,” Davey said.

“You’ll be at the bachelor party on your own if you don’t stop talking about that right this second. And you just changed the subject on me. Where’s he staying?”

“Actually, he’s staying in your old bedroom. Probably jerking off to old high school photos of you as we speak.”

He supposed he shouldn’t be surprised about anything anymore. Holden, who lived a concierge life through and through, did the unbelievable when other people came into the picture. How much more his mother, whom he now accepted was probably loved more than him.

“Is he okay, Jones?” he asked quietly. “Does he seem…” But he wasn’t sure what to ask. Frustrated? 

Or did Holden seem more like himself?

But none of his family had seen Holden as he used to be, open and confident, the easiest and best person in the world be spend a minute or a year with. Not given to fear or self-doubt about his place in anything.

Was he like that now, spending time with his family? Free to believe in a different, more grounded future than his past?

“He seems fine,” Davey said simply. “Fine, and _really_ happy to be here.”

And without knowing it was coming, tension began ebbing to a low state inside him. Rather than calming him though, it was leaving a restiveness. He wanted to hold a fine and really happy Holden even worse than a worried Holden.

“But you could tell he misses you though.”

“Are you just saying that because you think I want to hear it?”

“Well, now I’m not gonna tell you.”

He was quiet, waiting.

Davey said, “You know those shearling gloves your dad gave you for Christmas 2000, right?”

“Yeah?”

“He hasn’t taken them off since he got here.”

His heart kicked into a lower gear, making it harder to catch his breath. Taking an inaudible one, he sank lower into the pillows.

Davey was quiet on the line, waiting for him to say something stupid, probably. 

“You need me to get off the phone?” Davey said teasingly.

He stopped talking about Holden. He told Davey instead was that he was a loser for not having sent pictures of Michelle’s pregnancy.

*

It hit the internet that Holden was back in Johnston. And everyone assumed it was over wedding preps. So online, the madness continued.

Johnston lit up the city kicking into an advertising campaign that NFL’s Draft Day was around the corner and if you weren’t spending it in “The Midwest’s Hometown for Football,” you weren’t spending it right.

Knowing they would be all over him for information, he had no idea what Holden was telling anyone on the city council about their wedding or… football or whatever. At this point he didn’t care. If Holden organized something and said jump, he’d just say how high.

He spent the week tracking Holden’s progress on Instagram. Twitter, he couldn’t keep up with, though Davey, whom he suspected had some kind of account going, sent him links. With pictures. 

Holden looked intensely cold in the slightly brutal cold front that had followed central Iowa’s heatwave, and he had never wanted to defrost anything so badly in his life.

He never asked Holden what Holden did those six weeks they were apart after his coming out. Knowing Holden, Holden had probably just gone to work or traveled or something. Whereas he was trying to just get off the internet.

*

It turned out Alastair hadn’t been kidding about making the most of “their time” together. His task now seemed to be saving him from an empty existence without Holden.

Because he got to see the prospective vineyard purchase in Santa Barbara. Just him and his new BFF. And it was all the more unfair because the person who was the reason he was here was off having a great time somewhere where people were normal.

By now he was in full self-pity mode. It was only Tuesday and it felt like Holden had been gone _a week._ The ethereal vineyard where his babies were to spend their summers was just a chore he had to get through this afternoon with his overcompensating father-in-law.

This was the rest of his foreseeable offseasons? Hanging out with Alastair whenever Holden determined he’d had enough crazy for the time being?

“How much do you know about philanthropy, Sean?” Alastair asked him suddenly, driving them around the property on a golf cart. 

The real estate agent was somewhere back at the main house still flushed with his nearly uncontrollable excitement at the privilege of showing Alastair Wilson around the property, and the subsequent reality that he wouldn’t be showing him much more than the main house. 

Alastair had told the poor guy to “wait around,” that they’d be back, and had driven them off to the see property on their own.

He shrugged a shoulder to Alastair’s question, unable to resist noting how absolutely lovely the grounds were. Acres of vineyards and flowers. And a cool dry air that was exceptionally pleasant. 

“I think the most I know about it is watching Holden over the years,” he said honestly to Alastair’s question.

“Well, since discussing the wedding is off limits, we’re gonna talk about your foundation and where it’s gonna take you.”

He stifled another sigh.

He had texted Holden wanting confirmation that he had heard him right that he wasn’t coming until _next_ week. Holden had responded with a one-word reply: _Yes._

The text had come in while he was taking a shower the night before, and he had stood while steam rose around him and felt like the biggest asshole in the world.

He had then put the phone back out on the ledge by the sink and that had been the last time he would communicate with him unless Holden initiated it.

*

The following morning, he delayed going down for his workout under Xander’s watchful supervision. Instead he took his laptop into the kitchen with him and after finishing breakfast began looking at pictures. 

There was a collection on Holden’s Dropbox account, but Holden had told him that if he needed to see the collection that included the ones he had taken himself, he’d need to go into a secure cloud account Holden had set up with a private hosting company. He had to track down the password to where he’d written it on the back page of his schedule binder.

He opened his browser to a new window in private mode, as Holden’s instructions dictated. He entered the site’s URL, then the password into the only dialogue box that popped presented itself onscreen, and he was instantly rewarded with five folders of pictures. Automatically he went to the one named “Sean and me,” before halting his hand. 

His mouth parting and his body heating on its own had assured him he needed to not do that. 

He read the names of the other folders: _”Sean”, “Bonfire and cookout etc,” “My new hometown.”_ And then the last one, ”My family.”

He slid his finger across the track pad to that last one and double tapped. The folder sprang open to reveal pictures of all of them, including Davey’s family, from their two weeks in Johnston. A quick scroll down confirmed that the pictures were from that first Friday night at the bar with his childhood friends, through to the morning of their departure, everyone milling about in front of his parents’ house.

He stared in fascination at the images. He had seen countless numbers on the internet—scrolled past them, more accurately—and excepting in passing he hadn’t actually seen what Holden had been busy downloading from the web. Pictures were pictures and looking at them whether seated or walking by didn’t change their contents. 

That was what he had presumed.

Now he stood in the quiet kitchen seeing them through Holden’s eyes. Pictures of his sisters laughing riotously with Holden between them and his arms around both of them. Several with Holden and Deena, with Deena’s arm secured around Holden’s waist like he was there at her invitation, including plenty from from Bradford Hill. A few with Holden and Davey, whom he noted in almost all of them had his hands respectfully in his pants pockets and not anywhere on Holden. And one, that almost broke his heart, of Holden standing with his mother with a beautiful smile on his face. They were holding hands, their fingers clasped tightly between them. His mother looked like she was waiting for the picture taking to finish so she could brush some warmth back into Holden’s pale cheeks. From the number of old timers around, it appeared to have been taken the morning of that brunch he had heard of but hadn’t been invited to.

He looked at pictures of Holden and Michelle, whispering with their heads together like conspirators. And of Lewis making a fist and asking Holden to feel his forearm—Lewis, who selected all the models of his and Barb’s RVs, fancied himself a kind of strongman, but it was Barbara who did all the domestic repairs. And of Holden and his dad, sitting together on the deck with their feet up on a table, deep in conversation. The next one showed them with their heads closer together, smiling and waving at the camera.

And then a final one, of that morning of their departure, taken on Holden’s camera by one of the neighbors. A portrait of the entire family. There had to have been a better one, but Holden seemed to have chosen a much messier one, before everyone got arranged and could smile into the camera. There was much to smile about in the disorganized picture, but the only thing he was seeing was Holden clutching Allison’s hand as if he would never let go.

What he finally realized in that moment was extraordinarily simple: That he hadn’t fully grasped what Holden had experienced in Johnston.

Arms folded, he stared at the picture. 

After long moments, he moved the curser to the folder marked for the events that had taken place in town during that time. The bonfire all the way through Bradford Hill.

Every image he saw confirmed that it had been specially selected. Holden hadn’t just been downloading as many images as possible off the web, he had been capturing his emotional progression from the time.

He looked up at the wall, realizing one thought. That Holden allowing his parents this much leeway since their return was nothing less than a glowing testament of how far Holden had come.

Well, two thoughts. Also that Holden really, really, liked him.

*

He turned his focus to the things he needed to be getting done this summer. Asking Kara to forward the interview questions to his email, he spent some time reading and thinking about them. Then once the Players Association stepped up their call for him to deliver on an update to the tournament, he seized the opportunity and followed up with Alastair.

He’d handed him the packets in Santa Barbara and now, Friday morning, Alastair got back to him with a hand delivered letter containing locked commitments from a sizable group of moneyed golfers.

When he entered Kara’s office and set letter with the list of names on her desk, she skimmed it without knowing what it was meant to be and he got a pretty good feeling from the way her jaw dropped.

“Sean,” she whispered. “I am both happy and impressed!”

He lifted a shoulder. “I’m here to throw touchdowns.”

“I will get in touch with their offices asap,” she said, then snatched up the letter before he could take it back. “Can I keep this?”

“It’s your copy.”

She smiled up at him. She was actually smiling. “What’d you usually say?”

“Outstanding.”

—

An unexpected, stunningly bright thing then happened.

Kara called him back for a impromptu meeting in her office right after lunch. 

The ad agency executive who had approached him about changes to the Patek Philippe campaign had gotten back to them. And that he needed to see this.

He nosed his Navigator back in the direction of Beverly Hills and delayed his trip to the Association offices. When he arrived at Kara’s office, the executive was seated in one of the chairs in front of Kara’s desk—in her tailored suit, she looked incredibly out of place in the “casually decorated,” “organized” clutter—and was smiling beguilingly at him.

“Hey, Sean,” she said, in sensual overtones. “You look good this afternoon.”

“Likewise. What’s up, ladies?”

Kara indicated for him to go over, and as he did so took in the open portfolio in front of her. He went around to her side of the desk and looked down at the spreads. All told, six of them, as far as he understood how concepts were laid out. Two-page and single page.

He stopped beside Kara’s chair, wondering what the excitement had been all about. And then he was actually looking at the spreads.

All of them featured one commonality. A guy in casual sports apparel, T-shirts, cargos, sweat hoodies— that was him, and another guy in a three-piece suit, in all of them— which was Holden. The Photoshop paintings left no vagueness about that. 

It was the tone and contents of the art that had him standing there with a stunned, thrilled sensation flaring through him.

He looked at the executive. She merely smiled.

“Is the sponsor gonna want this?” he asked in surprise, pointing at the table. “Don’t they usually go for— well, like the stuff I saw last week?”

“They’re going for it,” she said. “They think it’ll be an interesting twist on their father and son series. Hey, and who doesn’t like a good twist.”

“It’s…definitely a twist,” Kara agreed.

He looked again at the art concepts. “You said you guys came up with this?”

“Of course. We’re the ad agency.”

He really didn’t know what had him so…taken. That they had thought of using him and Holden, that the sponsor had seen no objection to it. Or that he felt like he was looking at…the future.

None of the art was risqué or raunchy. They weren’t even suggestive. There was simply a…revelation about them, that brought about a raw charge, so that the paintings of them doing basic things that they had never actually done together—watching a football game in a sky box, Holden carrying a bag full of his gear while talking to him in a locker room, Holden sitting on a desk appearing to be reading his contract while he was standing next to him, talking on the phone—seemed indescribably erotic.

“What’s the sponsor seeing here that they like?” he asked.

“They always want unique.”

He slowly nodded. 

He trailed his finger over the last one. They were sitting side by side on a corporate jet. Just talking.

“I hope I’m not making you blush,” she said.

Which made him wonder how she had known, not to mention managed, to imbibe the art with such unmistakable undertones.

“Would you have not suggested them, if you thought I’d blush?”

“Probably not,” she said wryly.

He shook his head. “I’m not blushing. Far from it.” He lowered his hand. “I love them.”

“Excellent.”

“What’s the caption gonna say?” he asked her.

“We’ve got some ideas, but we’re still talking about it with Patek. I can’t give you all the fun in one day.”

Kara looked up at him. “I think Holden is gonna love this.”

“We’re hoping so. Plus we’ve got an amazing portfolio of models that you can both have fun looking at.”

And then she quietly cleared her throat, in a way that made him spare her a look. She wasn’t looking in his direction. 

“Can we keep this?” Kara asked.

“It’s all yours.”

“We’re two-fer today, Sean. This is great!”

The executive got up, picked up her brief. “I saw on Twitter that Holden’s back in Johnston. I’ve seen some of the pictures coming out.” 

She straightened, met his eyes with a smile. “He looks amazing.”

He narrowed his eyes at her.

*

His buzzing phone was loud enough for Anne and Wil to hear. He quickly pulled it out of his pocket, amazed and so thrilled because he wasn’t even hesitating now to look at and answer it.

“Is it Sean?” Wil asked, dryly. “If it is, hand the phone over to me.”

“Oh, hush,” Anne said. “You act all superior, like you don’t know where he gets it from.”

“It’s not Sean,” he said, curbing his laughter. “Please go on. I’ll catch up in a minute.”

He moved to one side of the entrance to the city council building.

He’d barely hit accept and brought up the phone when he heard Elliot launching into a tirade.

“What’s going on?” he interjected in concern.

It took another paragraph of ranting, but he picked up that Craig had told Elliot and Petey that he had met Sean. And that “Holden was totally different around him.” Why, didn’t they know?

“So by the count of this fucking weekend—”

“Elliot,” he said, trying not to sound like he was laughing, which he was, “this is sooooo not the time.”

“Oh, there’s never a good time, Holden.” Elliot paused. “Are you gonna be back by this weekend?”

“No, I’m not—”

“Is Sean there with you?”

“No, Sean’s in LA. Elliot, I gotta go. I’ll talk to you when I get back.”

“No, _I_ will be talking to _you_ when you get back.”

He laughed under his breath. “No problem. And I’m sorry. Please give Petey an apology kiss from me, please.”

“I don’t want your kiss,” Petey was saying in the background. “I demand to meet him.”

He looked at the doors, at which a council woman was standing, waving at him. He whispered that he had to go, disconnected, smiling, and hurried toward her.

*


	6. Chapter 6

Friday evening he went out on Holden’s bedroom balcony, Soirée’s monthly checklist in hand. He meant to call Marissa that evening. He gave the list a once over. They had lost over three weeks.

The chill had passed through LA. A warm evening breeze was now blowing through the space and making him feel as if it was doing its best to sexually arouse him. 

During the day, he barely even questioned whether he was doing okay. He was doing okay. And he had started considering that this was a good thing. It would make them more excited to see each other when they got back together. Every single relationship advice said that being together all the time wasn’t good for a couple.

He pretty easily convinced himself of that during the day. But in the evenings his whole body, not to mention his aching heart, would aggressively point out that the time they spent together could barely fill a thimble, compared to say the time he spent with his teammates, his coaches or even some ESPN reporters.

But he had learned not to argue with either positions. This was just who he was when he and Holden had to be unwillingly separated. Maybe it was based on the way their relationship had formed. Whatever it was, he was just proud that he had stopped bugging the guy, and he could just deal in whatever way he could manage.

Holden had actually sent a text on Wednesday afternoon. _Brownie says hi._

He took a deep breath. He should call Marissa.

“Good evening, Sean. How nice to hear from you!”

“Hi, how are you, Marissa. Listen, I’m sorry for calling so late—”

“Oh, please, don’t apologize. Being a wedding planner is nearly as demanding as having a newborn. It’s a twenty-four a day job. How can I help?”

Feeling a little embarrassed, he explained that while they’d definitely been looking at the planning binder, they’d need more time—maybe a week?—to get back to her on how they wanted to move forward with the wedding.

“Not to worry,” Marissa said, her calm tones in place. “Holden already called and told me to expect you both in the coming week.”

He blanked with surprise.

“Friday or Saturday he said,” Marissa continued. “I’m very excited to see what you’ve  both come up with.”

_As am I,_ he thought in continued surprise. 

“Well, awesome then,” he said. "Thanks again, Marissa.”

“My pleasure.”

He disconnected and strolled to one end of the balcony, scrolling down his call list until he got to Allison’s number. After some seconds, he tapped it. 

Allison answered after a few buzzes.

“Hey, kiddo,” she said, happily. “How’s it going?”

“Ah, I could ask the same thing,” he said lightly. “About over there, I mean. Good things, I take it?”

“Missin’ him, huh?”

He pressed his lips. He was trying to maintain the right tone, but it was evening and it was his evening side calling.

“Allison, I don’t wanna sound like I’m pushing after everything that’s happened, but…Davey says he’s missing me.” He paused, heard himself asking, “Is he missing me?”

“Aw, sweetie,” she said. “You should’ve seen him sitting there staring at his phone and forcing himself not to call you.”

“What? Why?”

“Because he says he wants to focus.”

“On what?” Then, timidly, “What’re you guys _doing_ over there?”

“Not allowed to say. He’ll tell you when he gets back.”

“But… he’s not doing it anymore? Wanting to call me.”

“No, he’s given his phone to mom to hold.”

“He has?” he asked dumbly, stumped for a moment. “Then how’s he been working? He’s got only the one line for work.”

“Beats me. Ask him when he comes home. It’ll give you two something to talk about between all the sex you’ll be having.” 

He tugged on his ear lobe. Fucking nights…

He lowered his head, mumbled into the phone. “Tell him I’m thinking of him, will you?” he said softly. “Tell him to not leave me so high and dry the next time. Tell him I understand what he’s going through but that we probably need to make some changes in the way we figure things out with each other. I-I’m guilty of it too, but it’s not going to get us anywhere if we keep doing this and we’re missing the short time we do get to spend together. Tell him—” he stopped and let out a hard breath. 

He stopped talking altogether.

“Feel better?” Allison asked gently.

What he was actually feeling was that he now understood firsthand what Holden had angrily said to him one phone call when he had accused him of not missing him during last season.

“You two are something else,” Allison said. “So. If he was standing right here, what would you want me to tell him?”

“Tell him I love him and I miss him, and that I can’t wait for him to come home.”

“Will do, kiddo. Here’s a big hug from me.”

“Thanks, Allison.”

—

Holden called that night, making him suspect that he had actually been standing right there. 

“I’ve missed you nonstop since I got here. Did you dream about me?”

“Every night. With my eyes open.”

He could feel Holden smiling.

“Is this really you?” he asked.

Holden laughed, self-consciously. The way he got over the phone when he knew he wasn’t asking him for phone sex, only because he wasn’t saying the words.

He laid there, in the semi-dark, on his bed, smelling him. Listening to his voice. 

“Tell me something good, beautiful.”

Holden told him that it had been so cold that yesterday evening Bradford Hill was closed because of fear of ice sheeting on the mountain. That one of the teenage girls who had overseen their kiss in the gazebo on Sled Night had seen him in Louise’s and had burst into uncontrollable screaming and then tears. She had then cried that it wasn’t coincidence and had given him a major kiss to pass on to him.

He shook his head, so in love. “That’s not something good, that’s something PG-13.”

“What’s _good_ about it,” Holden said. “Is that she then showed me a drawing on her phone she’d made of that night, of _later_ that night.” He felt the smile in his voice. “And I was on top.”

He started laughing, in a way he hadn’t in a really long time. 

That was what it meant to be beautiful.

Holden gave him a kiss over the phone. And told him he was coming home early.

He slept like a lamb.

*


	7. Chapter 7

On the night Holden was set to return, Alastair took him to an American Civil Liberties Union dinner. It was for the funding of LAMBDA, the legal arm of the national gay and lesbian organization, so he felt bad that he wasn’t paying any real attention to anything going on. Except when there was activity at the doors.

Cecelia was there. 

She looked casual, composed, a beautiful diamond version of her son.

Holden had texted that he would be arriving that evening—it was Monday—and had asked him where he’d be. He had wanted to pick him up from the airport but Holden had said he’d meet him where he was.

He had repeated that his parents were likely to be in attendance. Holden had responded…with a smiley face.

He had taken a close look at the thing. It wasn’t the default one that meant a perfect, carefree smile. But it had been a smiling face nevertheless.

So he could forgive himself, even if no one else did, for spending most of the night holding something he wasn’t drinking and mentally faced the doors.

At around ten p.m., Holden arrived at the function. Even with his gaze drifting there every five minutes he still didn’t immediately accept the sight. It was his heart having blown a tire and pounding around in his chest that made him accept that he was seeing him.

Dressed in an evening tux and a black bow tie, one shade paler than last week, Holden was smiling easily and greeting everyone in sight. That was the first thing.

Second, it was the sight of his mom and dad coming into the room on either side of Holden.

He must have had the most blank look on his face because the standing person next to him said, “Do you know those people with him?”

He turned and looked at the man, a journalist from Reuters. He managed to nod.

Then he watched as Holden simply walked his mom and dad over to where Alastair was standing, and casually introduced their parents.

Alastair visibly thrilled at the moment, while he was standing watching as if seeing a movie. Alastair turned, looking for who else, and waved at his ex-wife when he saw her. Cecelia excused herself from the guests she was talking to and went over. Holden watched as his father excitedly introduced Cecelia to “Sean’s parents!”

He lip read, and could practically hear it from across the room.

Holden made some kind of excuse—and he didn’t miss it when Wil discreetly patted Holden’s shoulder—and left them to start across the room.

They hadn’t made eye contact, but Holden seemed to be aware of where he was standing. 

He simply watched as Holden went around guests, saying hello, until he was standing right next to him.

The Reuters journalist greeted Holden, mumbled an excuse, and left.

Holden took him by the elbow, his eyes to the rear of the room. “I want to talk to you,” he said, starting to move them along.

He couldn’t help glancing across the room. 

“They’ll be fine,” Holden said. “They’re pretty ready to be here.”

Holden took him out on the patio and immediately the warm breeze that had been waiting to greet him later wrapped itself around him. He welcomed it. With all his heart.

Holden moved them to one side of the filled up space, overlook the white tents set up in the hotel’s back gardens like large white secrets. Holden found them a pair of bar stools and sat them down facing each other. His feet were on either side of him. Like he wanted his full attention. 

He had it.

A restful quiet joined them. Holden took him by the knee, his head lowered. He seemed to be thinking. 

Then he raised his head at him, a heartfelt smile on his face. 

“Hi, quarterback.”

“Hey, stranger.”

—

He hadn’t been kidding when he had told Sean that he could simply run away with him. Sean made everything seem so easy. Too easy. It was why he had had to go on his own. Because he couldn’t keep pretending that he knew how to keep up with what came so easily for Sean.

Sean had told him he would take care of him, the one thing that had broken him into giving him a commitment. But in his world, _he_ took care of things. And he couldn’t meet Sean even one quarter of the way if he continued shirking those responsibilities. If he continued fearing his past, his emotions, and being his own person.

For the first time, he wanted to show need to Sean. Not out of anger, frustration, or fear, or desperation. But out of love. Out of trust for him. He wanted them both to know that he could be vulnerable with his clothes on and while he was sober.

And so with an open heart, he began to tell Sean his innermost fears about his parents. About his dad especially.

“You know as an adult I never wanted or needed it. I could live without their doting or love. Even if I knew something was missing, it had always been all right. Who has it all in life. But now I want it. I want a father who can love me for who I am. The way Wil loves me. As for my mother…I don’t know what to think. Even what to do. But I can tell you that I want her love just as equally.” He shrugged. “I don’t even understand what that means. But Anne makes me realize that I want it.”

He looked at Sean, who was looking at him with his serene blue eyes.

“My underlying fear is that…this is a problem I can’t fix. I could…somehow…fix myself enough when I needed to, to better deserve you. But this I don’t know how. There are things I can’t even tell you, not because I don’t want to but because I don’t even recognize them well enough to put them into words.”

“I know,” Sean said.

“You do?”

Sean nodded, his gaze still on him. “You made me want the same things. Things that had always ever just been words in my head. And the fix seemed impossible. But it changed my life, Holden. It’s why I keep telling you that you need to accept that it’s going to take a rough road. You’re the one in control.” 

Sean shook the hand he had on his knee.

“Hang out with your dad. And go visit your mom sometimes. The three of you are like business partners with agreements. Just spend time with them with no expectations. Not even the expectation that they’ll act normally.”

And impossibly, he nodded. “I understand.”

Sean had lifted a hand, was touching his jaw, his lower lip. 

“I said I’d take care of you. You better believe I will.”

He looked out from under his lashes at him. “How’re you so good to me?”

Sean was still touching his lip. Staring at him as if he hadn’t heard his question. Then he lowered his hand to his thigh, stroking it as he spoke.

“You remember the first time we ever went out together? When you asked me why I’d called you back after you didn’t return my calls for a month?”

Blushing a little, he nodded.

“Remember I told you I did it because I liked you, and that I’d say more but I didn’t want to freak you out?”

He nodded again.

“Well, Holden… I really like you. I like your smile. And I like your personality. I like that you drive me insane. I have no doubt that I’d be doing this even if you were someone else’s fiancé.”

He wrinkled his nose. “That might be a problem.”

“That is our problem. You absolutely called it in my mom’s kitchen.” Sean had lifted his hand again, like he couldn’t keep it off him, ran his finger along his jaw. “So the best sex in the world or no sex at all, whether I don’t see you for ten years, or I see you every day, we’re always here for each other.”

The statement was so obvious, but so necessary, that for long moments, he let that be everything.

“I have something for you,” he said softly.

He slipped his hand into his pocket and when he withdraw it, in it sat a navy blue velvet box. A small one.

There was total silence.

“I don’t have the… cool to pull off anything like you did…”

“What is that?” Sean said in a rough voice.

He stared at it. He had asked himself the same question when he had order it, gone to Harry Winston to pick it up. Seeing it had left him speechless with a host of emotions.

“It’s me finally getting it,” he said, still staring at it. Then he looked at Sean and Sean looked stunned. 

Though he didn’t know why he should be.

“I want you to have this because I love you in a way I can’t express. And I want that whenever you look at this, you understand that. Also, I want other people look at this and understand that I gave this to you, that we’re in this together.”

He opened the box facing him and Sean brought his finger to it. And a camera flash went off.

They turned in its direction to find that a wide-eyed flock of owls had replaced the guests on the patio.

Sean lowered his hand, and he did the same with the box.

“Maybe later?” he asked softly.

Sean raised an eyebrow, giving him a look like he was crazy. “You better _believe_ later.”

He took his hand. Sean squeezed back and he slowly, mindlessly, leaned forward until he was breathing against his neck. Sean’s arm came around his back and held.

“Are we having another meeting in Bel Air?” Sean asked against his face.

“Yes we are,” he replied. “An easier and a better one. And we’re all staying in my father’s house.”

*


End file.
